Introduction: general description of biomathematics

Biomathematics is a set of theoretical models and computational and simulation techniques designed to understand the physiology of living systems, to explain, in particular, their pathological dysfunctions and to exploit the understanding of their mechanism of occurrence, in order to predict, prevent and possibly correct them. In a first approach, we describe the explanatory use of biomathematics, in its discrete and then continuous versions, to model living systems, outlining the method and its application to an example. Then, from a forward-looking perspective, we'll give a few examples of the "therapeutic" use of biomathematics, where knowledge of normal functioning has enabled us to propose tests for early detection of abnormal behavior and strategies for correcting pathology.

Here's a simple example to illustrate this approach. Over the last twenty years or...