Biological Cybernetics: Information Processing in Living Systems

Living systems can be regarded as information processing machines. They react to external and internal signals and modify their behaviour accordingly in order to survive in a changing environment. Signal processing occurs at every organisational level, but we will focus on the molecular mechanisms of biological self-regulation.

What will you learn?

Specific skills

You will learn how to model biological regulatory processes. You will be able to create and test biochemical kinetic models describing genomic and metabolic regulatory circuits. Furthermore, you will learn how to simulate natural selection and the interaction of species during evolution.

General knowledge

You will develop a deep understanding of how scientific research works. You will understand the process of creating hypotheses that can be tested experimentally or by computer simulations. You will be able to contribute your knowledge to any scientific research project by asking the "right questions" and answering them using mathematical and computational tools.