Tom Michoel: "Unravelling the structure, function and evolution of modularity in biological networks"

Tom Michoel
FRIAS School of Life Sciences - LifeNet

Unravelling the structure, function and evolution of modularity in biological networks

Modularity of molecular interaction networks is a key concept to understand how multiply interacting molecules (DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites) give rise to discrete biological functions. Reconstructing the organizational principles that determine the structure and function of biological modules is therefore one of the core challenges of network biology. I will present several computational approaches for identifying functional modules using large-scale gene expression data and integrated networks of regulatory and protein-protein interaction data. Modularity also underlies the assumption that specific cellular subunits can be reengineered to perform a designed function, without disrupting other functions. While such a modular reengineering of the cell is still a long way ahead, we first need to understand if and how nature itself reuses functional modules in different contexts or organisms. I will present comparative analyses of the modular structure of the transcriptional, post-transcriptional and post-translational regulatory networks in multiple organisms, and of tissue-specific regulatory networks in cardiovascular disease patients.