Powerful engineering tools can help solve today's complex biological and biomedical research challenges - and this first-of-its-kind guide is paving the way. This trail-blazing work gives engineers a quantitative systems approach to bioinformatics research using computational tools drawn from technical disciplines. It presents biological processes in an engineering context to help engineers use their technical skills in solving novel biological problems and also to facilitate reverse engineering from biology in developing synthetic biological devices. This first-of-its-kind volume explores how the knowledge bases of various technical disciplines relate to, and are observed, in biological systems. It discusses signal processing techniques used in biological data analysis, explains cellular regulatory systems and their similarities to traditional control systems, and explores protein and gene networks, inference networks, and network dynamics. A major milestone in systems biology, this groundbreaking work points engineers to new frontiers in the convergence of engineering and biological research.