Methods in Computational Biology

Book excerpt: Modern biology is rapidly becoming a study of large sets of data. Understanding these data sets is a major challenge for most life sciences, including the medical, environmental, and bioprocess fields. Computational biology approaches are essential for leveraging this ongoing revolution in omics data. A primary goal of this Special Issue, entitled “Methods in Computational Biology”, is the communication of computational biology methods, which can extract biological design principles from complex data sets, described in enough detail to permit the reproduction of the results. This issue integrates interdisciplinary researchers such as biologists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to advance biological systems analysis. The Special Issue contains the following sections: • Reviews of Computational Methods • Computational Analysis of Biological Dynamics: From Molecular to Cellular to Tissue/Consortia Levels • The Interface of Biotic and Abiotic Processes • Processing of Large Data Sets for Enhanced Analysis • Parameter Optimization and Measurement