Mash-Up: Mathematics and Biology

A Book Review of Mathematics of Life: Unlocking the secrets of existence by Ian Stewart

I know that many of you have heard mash-up songs already and many likes that kind of style. I personally like the mash-ups of Daniel Kim or famously know for 'Pop Danthology' because he put all the top pop songs of each year together and the way he mixes those songs is awesome. This book by Ian Stewart is somehow that way, he is sort of the DJ and Mathematics and Biology are the’ songs’ he tries to mash-up. Yes, it is pretty daunting to just even see those two disciplines together but somehow they are better together (Jack Johnson fan here) and one of the most intriguing and exciting interdisciplinary fields, I am not surprised that it is a thing today. Studying interdisciplinary fields take research and those different disciplines to a whole new level making the impossible possible.

In Biology, the world changing innovations are the microscope, Linnaean classification, evolution and natural selection, genetics, and DNA but the Author proposes that Mathematics should be included because Biology has benefitted a lot from Mathematics with tools such as logical reasoning, axioms, and abstractions. After that, the Author introduces to the nitty-gritty of taxonomy, evolution, allopatric and sympatric speciation, DNA, genomes, genetics, epidemiology, viruses, gait, eukaryotes and prokaryotes, networking, pattern formation and axons then concluded that in order that mathematics will be more appealing to biologists, it needs more than just a ‘numerical coincidence’ and explained more about this by giving an example. He asked why biochemistry and mechanics generates, for example, petal patterns after the Fibonacci sequence and this is where mathematics comes into play.

Inspired by Alan Turing’s paper, The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, various biomathematicians based their specific model and biological theory of pattern-formation after that. But the author stated, “turns out to be too simple to explain many details of animal markings, but it captures many important features in a simple context, and points the way to models that are biologically realistic.” Turing’s ideas were extended by some people and the author noted one man who is James Murray and he proved a theorem based on Turing’s idea stating this: “A spotted animal can have a striped tail, but a striped animal cannot have a spotted tail. Intuitively, this is because the smaller diameter of the tail leaves less room for stripes to become unstable, whereas this instability is more likely on the larger-diameter body.”

After this chapter, the Algorithmic Game Theory makes its debut then the author brings the topic to a guy named Barry Siverno who studies the Uta stansburiana or side-botched lizards and there are three morphs of this type of lizard which are orange throated, blue-throated, and yellow-throated which suggests an evolutionary game where orange beats blue, yellow beats orange, and blue beats yellow. Then the author discusses the concept survival of the fittest in a way which there is no one sure winner and he discussed that if two species arise from one original animal, they can exploit the environment greatly rather than they are just one kind of species. And I quote from the author, “. A changing environment can change the balance of these forces, with dramatic results.” referring to the gene flow force and the natural selection force.

           Mathematics made a very big impact in field of Biology, I assume, and it absolutely shocked many and they have been inspired by this book to search for other combinations I believe. Mathematics has been a great help not only to biology but also to other fields and just another reason not to hate math. Life would not be what it is today unless math is involved. It made us stronger, innovative, and will lead other combinations that will enable people to formulate theorems that leading to another, experiments will be conducted, and next thing we know we are exploring another whole new world.