To introduce this special issue on biological switches and clocks, we review the historical development of mathematical models of bistability and oscillations in chemical reaction networks. In the 1960s and 1970s, these models were limited to well-studied biochemical examples, such as glycolytic oscillations and cyclic AMP signalling. After the molecular genetics revolution of the 1980s, the fi...

Endogenous biological clocks enable living species to acquire some independence in relation to time. They improve the efficiency of biological systems, by allowing them to anticipate future constraints on major physiological systems and cell energy metabolism. The temporal organization of a given biological function can be impaired in its coordination with astronomical time or with other biolog...

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) due to sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VTA) remains a major public health problem because of poor understanding of the mechanisms. Initiation of VTA in animal models and in patients usually requires intense metabolic or electrical stimuli not often observed for spontaneous arrhythmias, suggesting that profound but clinically silent electrophysiological changes...