QSB: Modeling Predictive Biological Networks in Halobacterium sp.

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Halobacterium sp. is a halophilic (salt loving) organism that thrives in naturally occurring environments of high salinity (10 times the salinity of sea water) such as the Great Salt Lake, the Dead Sea and solar salterns. This QSB (Quantitative Systems Biotechnology) project is designed to evaluate the effects of DNA damaging stress on Halobacterium sp. resulting from ultraviolet radiation, gamma radiation, oxidative damage and chemical mutagenesis using a systems approach. In a systems approach, the effects of genetic and/or environmental perturbations are measured at a molecular level and on a genome-wide scale. The resulting large data sets and diverse data types are analyzed simultaneously to formulate descriptive and/or mathematical models to describe the behavior of the whole organism. This will ultimately lead to engineering of complex biological processes for important and safe biotechnological applications.Broader impact: This collaboration brings together two leading laboratories with different perspectives regarding investigation of the same problem -DNA repair. These studies will result in training of one graduate student at UMD and one postdoctoral fellow at the ISB. Whereas UMD will benefit from global perspectives, new technologies and software developed in the Baliga laboratory, in return ISB will benefit from the DiRuggiero laboratory expertise in study of DNA repair mechanisms. Furthermore, all software developed at the ISB is open source and data from all projects is freely available on the ISB website as well as through other public databases. This study will also complement an ongoing education effort at ISB since the Baliga laboratory has recently joined an outstanding educational outreach program in a complementary NSF-funded project to bring new concepts of systems biology to high school classrooms. This project is co-funded by the Molecular Biochemistry Program in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and by the Biotechnology Program in the Bioengineering and Environmental Systems Division.