Biomolecular Feedback Systems
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this course on how living cells use feedback control at the molecular level to regulate their functions, and how those same principles can be turned around to design new synthetic biological circuits with predictable behavior. Lecture notes and problem sets cover the mathematical tools of feedback control theory, including stability analysis and dynamical modeling, applied to gene regulatory networks, signaling pathways, and biomolecular circuits. The course draws on the textbook Biomolecular Feedback Systems by Domitilla Del Vecchio and Richard Murray, and works through case studies such as bacterial chemotaxis and synthetic oscillators to show where engineering intuition holds up against real biology and where it breaks down. Materials are free to access under MIT's open license, with no certificate offered. Suited to students with some background in differential equations and linear systems who want to see control theory applied outside its usual engineering context.