CONSORTIUM: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

我们建议在芝加哥建立一个系统生物学中心，以促进跨学科的科学研究和教育。芝加哥大学基因组和系统生物学研究所的教员将发挥领导作用，并将与芝加哥其他机构的合作者一起创建对社区的广泛接触。该中心的科学计划将专注于转录网络在生理、发育和进化时间尺度上的稳健性。我们建议超越绘制网络拓扑的范围，来开发转录调控网络在生理应激、细胞和生物发育期间以及物种进化期间的行为的动态模型。这些目标将通过聚集基因组学、发育生物学、进化生物学、压力和生理学、网络建模、高性能和网格计算、化学和物理方面的专家来实现。该中心研究的首要目标是揭示转录调控网络在应对生理、发育和进化输入和压力时共享的组织原则。这些原则有望揭示网络中的结构-功能关系，这些关系导致生理和进化的健壮性，或者，它的补充，灵活性。

We propose to develop a Center for Systems Biology to promote interdisciplinary scientific investigation and education in Chicago. Faculty in the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology at the University of Chicago will take a leadership role and together with collaborators at other Chicago institutions will create a broad outreach to the community. The Centers scientific program will focus on the robustness of transcriptional networks in physiological, developmental and evolutionary time scales. We propose to go beyond mapping Network topologies to develop dynamical models of the behavior of transcriptional regulatory networks during physiological stress, during cellular and organismal development, and during the evolution of species. These goals will be achieved by bringing together experts in genomics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, stress and physiology, network modeling, high performance and grid computing, chemistry, and physics. The overarching aim of the Centers research is to uncover the organizational principles that transcriptional regulatory networks share as they respond to physiological, development and evolutionary inputs and pressures. These principles are expected to reveal structure-function relationships in networks that lead to physiological and evolutionary robustness or, its complement, flexibility.