Living systems maintain their physiological state under environmental changes and isolated genetic mutations through feedback within highly connected networks of genes, proteins, and other bio-molecules. Unfortunately, this robustness also makes it difficult to correct defects such as hereditary diseases, as evidenced by the surprising lack of efficacy of single target drugs that were designed to act on specific molecular targets.

This talk will address the question:  Can biologically relevant questions be addressed using physics type modeling? I will demonstrate with several examples that constraints imposed on the structure of solution surfaces by experimental data can be used to address biological questions, and I will present successful predictions and experiments that validate our approach.