Course Identification

Hormones keep our body in balance by means of ingenious circuits. When these circuits go wrong, they cause some of our most common diseases like diabetes, mood disorders and thyroid problems. We will understand human hormone systems and what general principles make them work so remarkably. Our tools will be simple mathematical models that can help us make sense of why these circuits are built the way they are. The course includes guitar songs and other ways to make zoom more enjoyable.

SYLLABUS

• The glucose-insulin circuit. How the number of hormone cells is determined. How glucose is kept constant despite changes in insulin resistance.
• Type-2 diabetes: how the circuit breaks down.
• Type-1 diabetes: why the body attacks its own hormone-producing cells.
• The thyroid circuit.
• The human stress response and the HPA axis: depression, addiction and bipolar disorder.
• The sex pathway, and how ovulation numbers are determined.
• Leptin and the control of body weight.
• The growth circuit: how our right and left sides are kept symmetric.

Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1. Understand hormone systems in terms of general mathematical principles that unify different systems.
2. Describe physiological systems using simple mathematical models, and generate new hypotheses that can be tested experimentally.

U. Alon, An introduction to systems biology: design principles of biological circuits. CRC press 2006.