The workshop will cover systems biology of plants aiming to bridge the gap between biologists and biophysicists/mathematicians. We intend to do this by presenting successful interdisciplinary collaborations, where the results could only be obtained by a joint effort. We believe this will stimulate future dedication to the plant systems biology field, where we aim in particular at young researchers. Scientifically the meeting will focus on plant development, photobiology and the circardian clock. These areas are most promising in the plant field for a systems biology approach because the establishment of genetic and molecular model systems provides an excellent background for a systems biology approach combining experimental and theoretical approaches.
While systems biology has become very fashionable among biologists and biophysicists/mathematicians projects based on their mutual interactions are still rare. Because of the excellent progress with genetic and molecular model systems many projects enable an unique opportunity to study the processes in great detail including the molecular interactions, the localization of proteins and a quantification of parameters. Yet, the communication problems between biologists and biophysicists/mathematicians often prevent a meaningful collaboration. With this workshop we aim to foster such interdisciplinary collaborations.