Table of Contents

1: The CD of Life: the genome
2: The organ of 30,000 pipes
3: The Score: is it written down?
4: The Conductor: downward causation
5: The Rhythm Section: the heartbeat and other rhythms
6: The Orchestra: the organs and systems of the body
7: Modes and Keys: cellular harmony
8: The Composer: evolution
9: The Opera Theatre: the brain
10: Curtain Call: The artist disappears

About the Author

Denis Noble, CBE, FRS, is Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford and is widely regarded as one of the popular proponents (and a very early founder of) of systems biology. He was Chairman of the IUPS World Congress in 1993, and Secretary-General of IUPS from 1993-2001. He played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, one of the international components of the systems biology approach, and Science included him amongst its review
authors for its issue devoted to the subject in 2002.

His previous publications include the seminal set of essays The Logic of Life (Boyd and Noble, OUP 1993), and he frequently appears in newspapers, and on TV and radio.

Reviews

An excellent informal introduction to the concepts and issues that form the bedrock of systems biology... His conversational style gives readers the feeling they are with him sharing in an active process of discovery. Eric Werner, Science highly evocative essay Steven Poole, Guardian