2009 BSSE Systems Biology Symposium
Date: June, 5th, 2009 Location: Congress Center Basel, Room Montreal
9:30 – 9:45 Welcome - Prof. Peter Chen, Vice President Research, ETH Zurich
9:45 – 10:00 The D-BSSE, Activities and Research - Prof. Martin Fussenegger, Department Chair D-BSSE
10:00 – 11:00 Patterning Transcription and Cell Shape Change in the Drosophila Embryo - Prof. Eric Wieschaus, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, Nobel Laureate Medicine 1995
With the first three hours of development, the Drosophila embryo establishes an precise pattern of transcription factors that divides the blastoderm into groups of cells destined to form different organs and tissues in the adult. The first and most immediate response of these cell fates decisions is that cells in particular primordia reorganize their cytoskeleton, adhesion and motor activities to achieve distinct shapes. These individual cell behaviors rapidly transform the global morphology of the embryo. In my talk I will discuss the relationship between the initial transcription profiles, the visible reorganization of the cytoskeleton, and the distribution of mechanical forces that control cell shape.
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 – 12:30 Systematic Interrogation and Manipulation of Cellular Networks: From the Kinome to the Chemome - Prof. Mike Tyers, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Cellular behaviour is often dictated by protein phosphorylation, which in turn depends on transient interactions between protein kinases and their substrates, referred to as the kinase interactome or kinome. We have applied sensitive gel-free mass spectrometric analysis and an advanced probability model-based statistical method to identify ~2,000 proteins associated with the 131 protein kinases in yeast. This kinome dataset elaborates known pathways into a super-network and provides a global view of phosphorylation-dependent regulation. The control of cellular responses in both health and disease must account for the densely interconnected genetic networks that integrate myriad processes in the cell. We have compiled a large set of chemical genetic interactions, a portion of the virtually infinite chemome, in order to identify combinations of small molecules that selectively target genotype and species-specific genetic networks. The concept of combinatorial small molecule intervention - termed “the magic shotgun” - can in principle be applied to both pathogen and disease gene networks.
12:30 – 14:00 Buffet Lunch
14:00 – 15:00 Systems Biology Analysis of a Streamlined Bacterium - Prof. Luis Serrano, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, Spain
Using a multidisciplinary approach encompassing different research groups we have dissected at the transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolome level a streamlined bacterium: M. pneumonia. Our aim is to be able to integrate all this information in order to obtain a model that allows for simulating the whole bacterium.
15:00 – 16:00 Approaches Towards Understanding the Paradoxical Relationship between the Immune System and Cancer - Prof. Jim Heath, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
The immune system provides one of the most potent weapons against cancer, and bolstering the natural immune response via engineered T-cell responses is an emerging and powerful therapeutic approach. By contrast, advanced tumors are often comprised of up to 50% by mass immune cells, and it is thought that, at this advanced stage, the relationship between those immune cells and the tumor is actually promoting some of the hallmarks of cancer, such as meta-stasis and angiogenesis. In this talk, technologies will be discussed that are designed to probe both sides of this problem, at both the fundamental level, and with applications to the clinic.
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break
16:30 – 17:30 Protein Sectors: Evolutionary and Functional Units of Tertiary Structure - Prof. Stanislas Leibler, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Protein function arises from the cooperative action of amino acid residues, but the pattern of residue cooperativity in the three-dimensional structure is generally unknown. Analyzing statistical correlations of amino acids within a protein family can reveal major aspects of this pattern. This analysis indicates a decomposition of the protein into groups of correlated amino acids that we term “protein sectors”. We propose that sectors represent the main functional and evolutionary units of protein structures. Work has been done in collaboration with N. Halabi, O. Rivoire and R. Ranganathan.
17:30 – 19:00 Possibility to visit the BSSE Department
The Symposium is free of charge, but you need to register on the website:
www.evento.ethz.ch/dispatch.asp
For more information, see www.bsse.ethz.ch/education/bsse_symposium
