Building a Community to Pursue Quantitative Cell Biology

细胞是所有生命的基本组成部分，理解（更重要的是，预测）细胞如何“计算”其行为决定的方法的发展，将标志着我们理解、构建和控制生物体能力的重大进步。虽然细胞的大多数分子成分已经被确定，但从分子相互作用中出现的细胞结构和行为仍然是一个从根本上神秘的过程。计算机模拟、数学模型和受物理学启发的定量测量方法正被用于研究细胞如何组合在一起并发挥作用的细胞生物学问题。但是，与生物化学或遗传学等许多已建立的生物学领域相比，定量细胞生物学作为一个自己的领域仍然相对较新，建立得并不牢固。该项目的目标是将致力于细胞定量方法的不同研究人员聚集在一起，帮助他们加入一个具有自己身份的社区，并分享研究人员在自己的小组中开发的方法和想法。这将通过各种机制实现，包括基于网络的社区思想交流和社会编码，以开发新的计算工具。将举办多个重点研讨会和更大的社区会议，并通过实验室互访和促进他们参加研讨会和会议来支持本科生和研究生的跨学科培训。该社区将包括所有对进一步实现定量细胞生物学目标感兴趣的研究人员，并将努力向外接触，邀请和支持在该领域代表性不足的妇女和群体的参与。通过将对定量细胞生物学有共同兴趣的研究人员聚集在一起，利用网络活动、一系列重点研讨会和实验室交流机会，该项目将加速这一新领域的发展步伐。生物学中一个尚未解决的基本问题是，如何理解细胞是由成千上万个组成部分共同作用而产生的一种新兴的生命结构；为了实现这一目标，需要目前尚不存在的定量和计算方法。只有将细胞生物学重新视为一门完全定量的科学，与凝聚态物理学相提并论，才有可能超越“一次一种蛋白质”的研究，并理解细胞作为一个整体是如何运作的。为了推进这一目标，将组织一系列高度互动和重点突出的研讨会，主题包括显微镜图像分析数据标准化框架和算法；细胞过程建模中尺度的挑战；数值方法的发展与信息理论在细胞生物学中的应用培养新一代定量细胞生物学家。将支持本科生和研究生的跨学科科学实验室交流访问，以及学生（特别是妇女和在该领域代表性不足的群体）参加定量细胞生物学的研讨会和会议。该奖项由分子和细胞生物科学部的细胞动力学和功能集群以及数学科学部的数学生物学项目共同支持。

The cell is the basic building block of all life, and the development of methods to understand (and more important, predict) how cells "compute" decisions about their behavior would mark a major advance in our ability to understand, build and control living organisms. While most of the molecular components of the cell have been identified, the emergence of cell structure and behavior from molecular interactions remains a fundamentally mysterious process. Computer simulations, mathematical models, and quantitative measurement approaches inspired by physics are being brought to bear on the cell biological question of how cells are put together and function. But in contrast to many established fields within biology, such as biochemistry or genetics, quantitative cell biology as a field of its own is still relatively new and not strongly established. The goal of this project is to bring together disparate researchers working on quantitative approaches to the cell, to help them join into a community with its own identity and share the methods and ideas that individual researchers have developed in their own groups. This will be achieved through a variety of mechanisms that include the web-based community exchange of ideas and social coding to develop novel computational tools. Multiple focused workshops will be held as well as larger community meetings, and the support of undergraduate and graduate student interdisciplinary training will be supported through laboratory exchange visits and facilitation of their participation in workshops and conferences. The community will be inclusive of all researchers interested in furthering the goals of quantitative cell biology, and efforts will be directed towards reaching out to, inviting and supporting the participation of women and groups under-represented in the field. By bringing together researchers sharing a common interest in quantitative cell biology, using web-based activities, a series of focused workshops and laboratory exchange opportunities, this project will accelerate the pace at which this new field develops.A fundamental unsolved problem in biology is to understand the cell as an emergent living structure resulting from thousands or millions of components working collectively; in order to achieve this, quantitative and computational approaches are required that do not currently exist. Only by re-thinking cell biology as a fully quantitative science on a par with condensed matter physics will it be possible to go beyond "one protein at a time" studies and understand how the cell as a whole is able to function. To advance this goal a series of highly interactive and focused workshops will be organized on topics that include the framework for standardization of data and algorithms for the analysis of microscope images; the challenge of scale in modeling cellular processes; the development of numerical methods and the application of information theory in cell biology; and the training of a new generation of quantitative cell biologists. Inter-disciplinary scientific laboratory exchange visits for undergraduate and graduate students will be supported, as well as the attendance of students (including especially women and groups under-represented in the field) at workshops and meetings in quantitative cell biology. This award is supported jointly by the Cellular Dynamics and Function Cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and by the Program in Mathematical Biology in the Division of Mathematical Sciences.