Academic Press Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine

Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine provides a comprehensive examination of phenotypic switching across biological systems, including underlying mechanisms, evolutionary significance, and its role in biomedical science. Contributions from international leaders discuss conceptual and theoretical aspects of phenotypic plasticity, its influence over biological development, differentiation, biodiversity, and potential applications in cancer therapy, regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy, among other treatments. Chapters discuss fundamental mechanisms of phenotypic switching, including transition states, cell fate decisions, epigenetic factors, stochasticity, protein-based inheritance, specific areas of human development and disease relevance, phenotypic plasticity in melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, non-genetic heterogeneity in cancer, hepatitis C, and more. This book is essential for active researchers, basic and translational scientists, clinicians, postgraduates and students in genetics, human genomics, pathology, bioinformatics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology and adaptive opportunities in yeast. Review "This is a very high-quality book that targets a developing area of biological research and fully fleshes it out thanks to excellent authorship. The volume is intended for a fairly narrow and select audience. It provides a comprehensive overview of the field as it stands today." --Doody Review Provides a comprehensive examination of phenotypic switching across biological systems, including underlying mechanisms and their role in biology and medicine About the Author Dr. Herbert Levine is Hasselmman Professor in Bioengineering at Rice University. He is also the co-director of Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontier Center devoted to applying concepts and methods from physical sciences to complex biological and biomedical problems. He is also the coordinator of an international research network of researchers in the Physics of Living Systems, under the auspices of the NSF Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) initiative. Dr. Levine did his undergraduate work at MIT, and received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1979. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard and a position on the research staff of the corporate research lab of Schlumberger Inc., he was appointed in 1987 to the faculty at the University of California, San Diego. He rose to the ranks of distinguished professor before leaving in 2012 to accept his new post at Rice. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Mohit Kumar Jolly obtained his B.Tech. and M. Tech. in Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur, India, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Rice University, working at the interface of systems biology and cancer biology. After a short stint as independent postdoctoral fellowship in Computational Cancer Biology, he joined the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, as an Assistant Professor. His work focuses on integrating mechanism-based mathematical models with experiments and clinical data to elucidate the mechanisms of cancer metastasis and therapy resistance. He won the 2016 iBiology Young Scientist Seminar Series – a coveted award for communicating one’s research to diverse audience. Dr. Prakash Kulkarni is a Research Professor at the City of Hope National Medical Centre. After receiving his PhD in biochemistry from India, he completed his postdoctoral training in cell biology at New York University School of Medicine. He began his independent academic career as an Assistant Professor of urology and oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, from where he moved to the protein biophysics laboratory at the