This volume reviews the theory and simulation methods of stochastic kinetics by integrating historical and recent perspectives, presents applications, mostly in the context of chemical signal processing, gene expression, enzyme kinetics and autocatalytic processes. In recent years, due to the development in experimental techniques such as optical imaging, single cell analysis, and one-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, biochemical kinetic data inside single living cells have increasingly become available. The emergence of systems biology brought renaissance in the application of stochastic kinetic methods as is reflected in this book.

Stochastic kinetics: why and how?.- Chemical kinetics: a prototype of nonlinear science.- Applicability of the deterministic model.- Fluctuation phenomena.- Stochastic chemical kinetics.- Continuous time discrete state stochastic models.- Model frameworks.- Stochastic processes.- The standard stochastic model of homogeneous reaction kinetics.- Solutions of the master equation.- Stationary and transient distributions.- Simulation methods.- Deterministic continuation.- Continuous state approximations.- Non-Markovian approaches.- Applications.- Introductory remarks.- Fluctuations near instabilities.- Compartmental systems.- Autocatalysis.- Enzyme kinetics.- Signal processing.- Gene expression.- Chiral symmetry.- Parameter estimation in stochastic kinetic models.- Stochastic resonance in chemical systems.- Computation with small stochastic kinetic systems.- The Book in Retrospect and Prospect.- Index.