Making sense of noise: introducing students to stochastic processes in order to better understand biological behaviors

Abstract

Biological systems are characterized by the ubiquitous roles of weak, that is, non-covalent molecular interactions, small, often very small, numbers of specific molecules per cell, and Brownian motion. These combine to produce stochastic behaviors at all levels from the molecular and cellular to the behavioral. That said, students are rarely introduced to the ubiquitous role of stochastic processes in biological systems, and how they produce unpredictable behaviors. Here I present the case that they need to be and provide some suggestions as to how it might be approached.