Building a Community to Pursue Quantitative Cell Biology

细胞是所有生命的基本构件，而了解(更重要的是预测)细胞如何“计算”关于其行为的决定的方法的发展，将标志着我们在理解、构建和控制活的有机体方面的能力取得了重大进展。虽然细胞的大部分分子成分已经确定，但从根本上讲，分子相互作用中细胞结构和行为的出现仍然是一个神秘的过程。受物理学启发的计算机模拟、数学模型和定量测量方法正在应用于细胞生物学问题，即细胞是如何组合在一起和发挥作用的。但与生物化学或遗传学等生物学中许多已有的领域相比，定量细胞生物学作为一个自己的领域仍然是相对较新的，也不是很成熟。这个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，并分享个别研究人员在他们自己的小组中开发的方法和想法。这将通过各种机制实现，其中包括以网络为基础的社区思想交流和社会编码，以开发新的计算工具。将举办多个重点讲习班以及较大的社区会议，并将通过实验室互访和便利他们参加讲习班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促进定量细胞生物学目标感兴趣的研究人员，并将努力接触、邀请和支持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，利用基于网络的活动、一系列有针对性的研讨会和实验室交流机会，该项目将加快这一新领域的发展步伐。生物学中一个根本未解决的问题是将细胞理解为一个紧急的生命结构，由数千或数百万个组件共同工作；为了实现这一点，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思考为与凝聚态物理学同等的完全定量的科学，才有可能超越“一次一种蛋白质”的研究，了解细胞作为一个整体是如何运作的。为推进这一目标，将组织一系列高度互动和重点突出的讲习班，主题包括显微镜图像分析的数据和算法标准化框架；细胞过程建模中尺度的挑战；数值方法的发展和细胞生物学中信息理论的应用；以及新一代定量细胞生物学家的培训。将支持本科生和研究生进行跨学科科学实验室交流访问，并支持学生(特别是妇女和外地任职人数不足的群体)参加定量细胞生物学的讲习班和会议。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.