ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the reader how to steal the family jewels of two functions that have important applications in all branches of biology: the natural logarithm and the exponential function. This master plan for larceny unfolds by cracking opens a window and sneaking into a discussion about how to integrate the reciprocal functions. To become a malignant cancer, a human cell must gain several abilities: to divide without limit, to ignore intracellular and the extracellular signals that might curtail its growth, to develop its own nutrient supply, and to invade other tissues. In genetics, the uncertainty or randomness associated with the expression of a gene can be quantified in terms of its ‘informational entropy’. A particular gene has only two states, switched on or switched off, which can be detected in the samples from the different tissues using a DNA microarray.
