SFB 618:  Theoretical Biology: Robustness, Modularity and Evolutionary Design of Living Systems

• Subject Area: Biology ; Chemistry
• Term: from 2002 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5485271

The central goal of the collaborative research centre is the development of theoretical concepts, mathematical models, and methods for data analysis that can be used to elucidate the ‘design’ principles of living systems, and to analyse their functional relevance. In order to achieve this goal, theoreticians and experimentalists jointly conduct a number of coordinated projects in which they explore the structural properties of cellular signalling pathways, regulatory and neuronal networks, and organismic interactions. The long-term plan is to develop a comparative and integrated understanding of the ways in which living systems solve the problem of robustness and adaptability, the role modularity plays in this context, and what favours and constrains the evolution of these properties.
The individual projects study various components of the nervous, immune, and reproductive systems, and the regulation of cell differentiation and gene expression. Some projects focus on the development of pathologies that illuminate the limits of robustness. Examples include degenerative diseases of the nervous system such as Huntington’s disease, modulations of the immune response by parasitic nematodes, and interference of intracellular bacteria with the reproductive systems of their hosts. With regard to data analysis, the collaborative research centre takes a particular interest in gene expression patterns and neuronal activity states. Collectively, the centre aims to explore new ways in which theoretical studies can help biology and medicine benefit from the overwhelming stream of data that ‘floods’ the life sciences due to major advancements in modern experimental techniques.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Correlation between regulatory DNA sequences and gene expression data based on the comparative analysis of non-coding regions between human and mouse (Project Heads Sers, Christine ;  Vingron, Martin )
• A02 - Charakterisierung der Fitnesslandschaft von Aminosäuresequenzen durch eine theoriegestützte Untersuchung von Peptid-Proteinwechselwirkungen mitels molekularer Bibliotheken (Project Heads Frömmel, Cornelius ;  Schneider-Mergener, Jens ;  Volkmer, Rudolf )
• A03 - Modelling of signalling cascades - the impact of the RAS pathway on transcriptional targets (Project Heads Blüthgen, Nils ;  Schäfer, Reinhold )
• A04 - The role of the circadian clock in tumour development/progression (Project Heads Herzel, Hanspeter ;  Kramer, Achim )
• A05 - Understanding the biological function of HEAT-repeat containing human proteins (Project Heads Andrade-Navarro, Ph.D., Miguel ;  Wanker, Erich E. )
• B01 - Processing of highly relevant acoustic signals by a sensory system - physiological basis and evolutionary constraints of neuronal feature extraction (Project Heads Ronacher, Bernhard ;  Schreiber, Susanne )
• B02 - Kontextabhängige Signalverarbeitung im visuellen System (Project Head Obermayer, Klaus )
• B03 - Synaptic conductances during sharp wave-ripple complexes (Project Heads Brecht, Michael ;  Kempter, Richard ;  Schmitz, Dietmar )
• B04 - High-frequency (600 Hz) components in primate EEG: Analysis and modelling of sub-millisecond coherence of cortical stimulus-evoked 'population spike bursts' (Project Heads Curio, Gabriel ;  Kempter, Richard )
• B06 - In a few computational steps from sensory representation to feature extraction and object recognition (Project Heads Hennig, Ph.D., Matthias ;  Nawrot, Martin Paul )
• B07 - Glutamate receptor trafficking in the integration of short- and long-term synaptic plasticity (Project Heads Herzel, Hanspeter ;  Sigrist, Stephan J. )
• C01 - Host manipulation by parasitic endosymbionts: Combining proximate and ultimate approaches (Project Head Hammerstein, Peter )
• C02 - Eingriffe von Parasiten in das Immunsystem ihrer Wirte (Project Heads Hammerstein, Peter ;  Hartmann, Susanne ;  Lucius, Richard )
• C03 - Integration of signal transduction and cytokine expression in T helper lymphocytes (Project Heads Höfer, Thomas ;  Löhning, Max ;  Radbruch, Andreas )
• C04 - Struktur, Dynamik und evolutionäre Optimierung zellulärer Reaktionsnetzwerke (Project Head Heinrich, Reinhart )
• C06 - Neuronal excitation as a perturbation of the energetic and osmotic homeostasis: Implications for robust network behaviour (Project Heads Holzhütter, Hermann-Georg ;  Kann, Oliver )
• C07 - Membrane biogenesis modelling of a Toxoplasma gondii-infected human cell and deduction of underlying metabolic principles (Project Heads Gupta, Nishith ;  Holzhütter, Hermann-Georg ;  Lucius, Richard )
• C08 - Theory-based prediction of drug targets in biological networks (Project Head Klipp, Edda )
• Z - Central tasks of the Collaborative Research Centre (Project Head Hammerstein, Peter )

• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Participating University: Freie Universität Berlin; Technische Universität Berlin
• Participating Institution: Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ); Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ); Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin (MDC); Max-Planck-Institut für molekulare Genetik (MPIMG)
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Peter Hammerstein