Cellular and Molecular Computation
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate-level course treating life as an emergent property of chemical reaction networks involving proteins and nucleic acids. Lecture materials cover mathematical models of metabolism, gene regulation, signal transduction, chemotaxis, excitability, motility, mitosis, development, and immunity. The course extends these models to applications in directed molecular evolution, DNA computing, and metabolic and genetic engineering. Materials include lecture notes and readings drawn from primary research literature, reflecting the course's roots in MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences curriculum. It suits students with a strong background in mathematics or systems biology who want to see how quantitative modeling frameworks apply to living systems at the molecular and cellular scale. As with other MIT OCW offerings, the course is free to access, with no certificate offered.