The class of squarefree monomial ideals is a classical object in commutative algebra, which has a strong connection to combinatorics. Our main goal throughout this dissertation is to study the algebraic properties of squarefree monomial ideals using combinatorial structures and invariants of hypergraphs. We focus on the following algebraic properties and invariants: the persistence property, non-increasing depth property, Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and projective dimension. It has been believed for a long time that squarefree monomial ideals satisfy the persistence property and non-increasing depth property. In a recent work, Kaiser, Stehlik and Skrekovski provided a family of graphs and showed that the cover ideal of the smallest member of this family gives a counterexample to the persistence and non-increasing depth properties. We show that the cover ideals of all members of their family of graphs indeed fail to have the persistence and non-increasing depth properties. Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity and projective dimension are both important invariants in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry that govern the computational complexity of ideals and modules. Our focus is on finding bounds for the regularity in terms of combinatorial data from associated hypergraphs. We provide two upper bounds for the edge ideal of any vertex decomposable graph in terms of induced matching number and the number of cycles. We then give an upper bound for the edge ideal of a special class of vertex decomposable hypergraphs. Moreover, we generalize a domination parameter from graphs to hypergraphs and use it to give an upper bound for the projective dimension of the edge ideal of any hypergraph. / Mengyao Sun