Digital Microfluidics for Systems Biology

This book is a modified version of the author s §thesis, "EWOD-based Digital Microfluidics as a Novel §Platform for Systems Biology . The author, having §mastered both medicine and engineering, believes the §real challenge in science and engineering today §is integration . For true integration, it is §important for an individual to have basic knowledge §about many different fields. However, having the §knowledge is not enough, since integration is not §simply adding things. Creative thinking is equally §critical, for integration is a way of creating novel §features or paradigms, which are often §incomprehensible before the integration. One of the §goals of this book is to demonstrate such §integration of various fields (digital §microfluidics, systems biology, high-throughput §imaging, machine vision, state machine, etc). §Another goal is to introduce state machine-based §gene transcription network modeling, which is not §included in the thesis. It is a novel way of §modeling complex gene regulation networks, and the §author believes it has potential of revolutionizing §genomics and shows the direction in which future §systems biology should move forward. This book is a modified version of the author s §thesis, "EWOD-based Digital Microfluidics as a Novel §Platform for Systems Biology . The author, having §mastered both medicine and engineering, believes the §real challenge in science and engineering today §is integration . For true integration, it is §important for an individual to have basic knowledge §about many different fields. However, having the §knowledge is not enough, since integration is not §simply adding things. Creative thinking is equally §critical, for integration is a way of creating novel §features or paradigms, which are often §incomprehensible before the integration. One of the §goals of this book is to demonstrate such §integration of various fields (digital §microfluidics, systems biology, high-throughput §imaging, machine vision, state machine, etc). §Another goal is to introduce state machine-based §gene transcription network modeling, which is not §included in the thesis. It is a novel way of §modeling complex gene regulation networks, and the §author believes it has potential of revolutionizing §genomics and shows the direction in which future §systems biology should move forward.