Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - TAIR
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - TAIR
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom - TAIR
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Unwinding the circadian clock with systems<br />
biology<br />
Systems biology approaches are helping us to understand the complexity of<br />
circadian clock mechanisms, as one of three pilot projects in CSBE. To develop<br />
mathematical models of the clock, we combine timeseries of molecular data and<br />
luciferase reporter imaging, with analysis of clock mutants, and computational<br />
parameter estimation. The models have predicted the properties of unidentified<br />
regulators in the clock and the photoperiod sensor.<br />
Models are now refined by direct comparison to data, and tested for their<br />
robustness to parameter variations. This prioritises our experiments, including<br />
measuring biochemical parameter values (Finkenstadt et al, Bioinformatics 2008;<br />
O’Neill, unpublished).<br />
Mathematical analysis helps us to understand the broad lessons from the<br />
models, and their detailed mechanisms. Single measures of global properties<br />
are useful to compare across species or mutants (flexibility dimension of Rand<br />
et al, Interface 2004, or the functional robustness of Kitano, Mol Syst Biol 2007).<br />
To unpick the biochemistry, we measure how one process, at one time, affects<br />
one specific output. I will illustrate: 1. how the flexibility of timing favours clocks<br />
with multiple feedback loops (Rand et al, J. Theor. Biol. 2006), 2. how complexity<br />
in both the clock and the light input pathways reconfigures the Arabidopsis clock<br />
under different photoperiods (Edwards, Akman and Troein, unpublished), and<br />
how this affects photoperiodism, 3. a new and simpler experimental organism<br />
that facilitates the testing of systems biology models, and that will be broadly<br />
applicable to plant systems biology at the cellular level.<br />
49<br />
L24<br />
Friday 12:00 - 12:30<br />
Systems Biology<br />
Andrew J Millar1<br />
Kieron D Edwards1<br />
Ozgur E Akman1<br />
John O’Neill1<br />
Carl Troein1<br />
Treenut Saithong1<br />
Kevin Stratford2<br />
Bärbel Finkenstadt3<br />
David A Rand3<br />
Francois-Yves Bouget4<br />
1Centre for Systems Biology<br />
at <strong>Edinburgh</strong><br />
University of <strong>Edinburgh</strong><br />
<strong>Edinburgh</strong><br />
EH9 3JR<br />
UK<br />
2<strong>Edinburgh</strong> Parallel<br />
Computing Centre<br />
University of <strong>Edinburgh</strong><br />
<strong>Edinburgh</strong><br />
3Warwick Systems Biology<br />
Centre<br />
University of Warwick<br />
Coventry<br />
CV4 7AL<br />
UK<br />
4CNRS<br />
Banyuls-sur-Mer<br />
France
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