I-AIM Interdisciplinary Seminar
(Institute for Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics)
3:10 PM April 12, 2006
Fields Institute, room 230
Computational Cell Biology: From Molecular Networks to Cell Physiology
John J. Tyson
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Biology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The fundamental goal of molecular cell biology is to understand cell
physiology in terms of the information encoded in the cell's genome. In
principle, we know how this information is translated into functional
proteins that carry out most of the interesting chores in a living cell.
But to make a firm connection between molecular events and cell behavior
involves many challenging computational problems at every step along the
way. The early steps--sequence analysis, protein folding, molecular
dynamics, metabolic control theory--are well established branches of
biochemistry. But the 'last step', from networks of regulatory proteins
to the physiological responses of a cell to its environment, is an
especially challenging problem that has received little attention so
far. Accurate and effective computational methods for deriving cell
behavior from molecular wiring diagrams are crucial to future progress
in understanding living cells and in modifying cell physiology for
medical and technological purposes. A nice example of this challenge is
the cell cycle: the sequence of events by which a growing cell
duplicates all its components and partitions them more-or-less evenly
between two daughter cells. The molecular mechanism that controls DNA
synthesis and nuclear division is so complex that its behavior cannot be
understood by casual, hand waving arguments. By translating this
mechanism into differential equations, we can analyze and simulate the
behavior of the control system, comparing model predictions to the
observed properties of cells. Theoretical models also provide new ways
to look at the dynamics of cell cycle regulation.