Séminaire LJK-Modèles et Algorithmes Déterministes: CASYS

 

Le Jeudi 1 Décembre 2005 à 9h45 en Salle 1 - Tour IRMA

 

Séminaire de Albert SORRIBAS (Universitat de Lleida)

 

The power-law formalism as a mathematical framework for systems biology

 

Résumé:

 

Cell biology has focussed in the last decades in identifying the many elements responsible for metabolic functions at different levels. A reductionist approach has dominated the field until the recent development of high throughput techniques in genomics and proteomics. These techniques have provided an enormous amount of data that cannot be processes without the concourse of computational techniques. Bioinformatics has thus emerged as a key discipline. This includes methods than goes from data mining to mathematical modelling, through structural methods, sequence comparisons, etc. As a whole, the new emerging paradigm is systems biology. This recognizes the need for understanding metabolic processes from an integrative point of view. In this seminar, I will focus on the role of mathematical models within this paradigm. I will discuss the appropriateness of the power-law formalism as a mathematical framework for developing models of complex metabolic pathways and present some examples. As applications, Ill discuss issues on identifying design and operational principles in metabolism. As specific biological examples, Ill show our results on identifying the network of reaction responsible for Fe-S cluster assembly in mitochondria and on identifying quantitative design principles in the adaptive response of yeast to heat shock.