Collaboration of Mathematics and Biology

                We all know that biology is the study of planet Earth’s living matter. First, biology was just about the plants and animals but later on, cells were being studied by the scientists. In the present time, there’s a great aid for studying the life science— mathematics. The relationships of these fields are tackled in the book: Mathematics of Life by Ian Stewart.

                The first chapter of the book was all about the five revolutions of biology namely the microscope, the classification of different species, the theory of evolution, the discovery of genes and DNA structure. These discoveries were great eye opener to the world of biology.

                I must say that human eye is not enough to discover the realms of life matter. There are things that are too small and too far that it becomes invisible using only the naked eye, we must need apparatus that will aid us to see these things. These are the microscope and the telescope invented by Zacharias Janssen and his son Hans. Small organisms were now seen because of these inventions.

                There are many different organisms in this planet, this must seem impossible to know but Carl Linnaeus did a systematical way of classifying living organisms. He classified the organisms according to its domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

                The fourth chapter of the book discussed about the geometry of the plants, the flower’s petals. It is said that the arrangement of the petals are close to the golden angle which is 137.5° and there numbers are following the Fibonacci numerology.

                Chapter five discussed about the natural selection that is imposed by Charles Darwin. He wrote the book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This book states that an organism can change its certain characteristics depending on its environment. He voyaged at the Galapagos Island and there he collected samples of finches with different size and shape of beak.

                Chapter six to eight discussed about genetics. Characteristics and traits of an organism can be predicted using the Punett square, where there is a dominant and recessive allele. One of the chapters also stated that the DNA is the molecule of life which is true. The DNA is the mastermind of all the things that we can observe in a certain organism, especially its morphological characteristics. In chapter 8, it is stated there that, “Genes make you fat, they make you homosexual, they cause diseases, they control your destiny.”

                The ninth chapter is more on the classification and the relationships of different species. Their relationships are shown as a tree diagram, it looks like a root but a tree won’t be a tree if there’s no root so it is considered to be a tree diagram. This tree diagram also shows how genes are passed from ancestral to descendant species.

                Euclid classified the five regular solids namely the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron. These solids acquired their names according to the number of faces that it have. In chapter 10, the geometry of the virus was discussed.

                The brain is the controller of the body, and this organ consists of nerve cells. These nerve cells serve as hidden wiring to make the body of the organism work. This cell is so complex but it has the ability in networking, that’s why an organism can react to its stimuli because of these nerve cells that are signaling the organism on what to do.

                The preceding chapters talked about life, population and some more about the DNA. In the second to the last chapter, aliens were discussed. The book also shown a picture of an allegedly alien that was named Grey, it has big dark eyes and it is grey in color. The existence of alien is still questionable until today, there were rumors that aliens visit the planet and the US government is just covering them up. The last chapter of the book stated Stewart’s sixth revolution but I didn't quite understood what was his revolution.

                Though I have a small knowledge in the topics discussed in the first nine chapters because it was taught in our Biology 10 class last semester, I still got some new information about how mathematics collaborate with biology. It is a very interesting book especially when you are fond of exploring new things about how math explained the science of life.

References:

Stewart, I. 2011. The Mathematics of Life. The Book of Life. pp. 117