Polynomial Dynamical Systems in Systems Biology

Research in systems biology focuses on the prediction and control of the behavior of biochemical networks through the use of mathematical models that accurately capture the responses of the network to certain types of perturbations. The construction of models based on the observations of these responses, referred to as reverse engineering, is an important step in discovering the structure and dynamics of such networks. Recently polynomial dynamical systems over finite fields were introduced as a class of models for reverse engineering. These lecture notes, which are largely excerpts of the author’s PhD thesis, are intended to provide the reader with key concepts related to reverse engineering using polynomial dynamical systems.