Dynamical modularity as guiding principle to decipher coordination of mammalian cell behaviors

Datum

24.03.2022

Zeit

11:00 - 12:00

Sprecher

Erzsébet Ravasz Regan

Zugehörigkeit

The College of Wooster, USA

Serie

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Sprache

en

Hauptthema

Biologie

Host

Sina Wittmann on behalf of the Postdocs

Beschreibung

Biological systems, from our bodies to cellular regulatory networks, are built of modules, and modules of modules -- a hierarchy. This is great news. It means reductionism may be a fruitful approach, as long as we carefully chop the biological system at "its joints". It suggests that in principle we could understand these modules in isolation, then put them together to understand the whole. The problem is, as these modules are wired together they create a system which is strongly dependent on its history and microenvironment. A registry of modules and their behaviors is not sufficient to decipher their coordinated response, or their influence on one another. My lab’s main goal is to build predictive models of this coordination in mammalian cells in health and disease, and uncover general rules that govern the coordination between modules in the process. Specifically, our models address regulatory systems that drive cell division, cell death, DNA damage response, senescence, and the impact of the 3D cellular environment within a tissue such as mechanosensing, contact inhibition and the epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Here I will showcase a few key modeling results and predictions on the road from a simple two-module cell cycle to a large model that juggles cellular life, death, senescence and contact-mediated cell fates. These functions all work slightly differently in normal tissue vs development vs cancer. In the process, I will highlight dynamical modularity of cell behavior as general rule these systems obey in coordinating their arsenal of functions. Understanding how this coordination is altered by diseases such as cancer, and building predictive models that leverage these insights, is critical to developing effective interventions.

Letztmalig verändert: 25.03.2022, 00:06:57