Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology

I consider three explanatory strategies from recent systems biology that are driven by mathematics as much as mechanistic detail. Analysis of differential equations drives the first strategy; topological analysis of network motifs drives the second; mathematical theorems from control engineering drive the third. I also distinguish three abstraction types: aggregations, which simplify by condensing details; generalizations, which simplify by generalizing details; and structurations, which simplify by contextualizing details. Using a common explanandum as a reference pointnamely, the robust perfect adaptation of chemotaxis in Escherichia coliI argue that each strategy targets various abstraction types to different mechanistic details.