HAVING TOO much information can be as frustrating as having too little. That's why a new research partnership launched earlier this week is taking a "big picture" approach to understanding how cells function, writes CLARE O'CONNELL
Launched on Tuesday and allocated €14.8 million by Science Foundation Ireland, the new Centre for Science Engineering and Technology (CSET) will focus on systems biology, which is “a new way to do science”, according to Prof Walter Kolch. He is the incoming director of the Systems Biology Institute at University College Dublin, which will link with Remedi at NUI Galway to form the new CSET partnership, Systems Biology Ireland.
“What we have been doing so far is trying to learn and understand how things work by dismantling them and looking at the parts. What systems biology does is the opposite, we are taking the parts and trying to better understand how the whole thing functions – how a whole cell functions, how a whole organism functions – based on a more holistic view.”
The approach hinges on developing mathematical models of complex biological systems, says Kolch, who moved to the Conway Institute at UCD this summer from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow.
“We can learn how things function as a whole, and this is accomplished by making mathematical models where you can then do simulations, so you can predict how an organism or a cell will respond.”
The systems approach takes advantage of the mountains of data being produced by new techniques to look at what happens biochemically in cells.
And rather than being frustrated by these giant datasets, if scientists have a model they can see how complex biochemical systems interact, and even to figure out how a system will react to changes, explains Kolch.
“We are moving from a passive understanding to a more active understanding where we actually predict how systems work, and that of course gives us a much better view of how we can interfere with the system,” he says, noting that this is particularly helpful when looking for new drug targets.
“The pharmaceutical industry faces big problems because they are running out of drug targets and the pipeline of drugs is drying out. What is needed now is something where you can look in a different way, and systems biology offers such a way.”
The new centre will focus on the networks of biochemical signals that relay messages within cells, on how oxygen levels affect cells and on how stem cells repair damaged tissue.
Part of the stem-cell work will take place in Galway, says Prof Frank Barry from Remedi. “We are very interested in understanding stem cells and the molecular pathways that control their behaviour, what essentially makes them proliferate or self-renew and differentiate and behave in a repair fashion when they are delivered to an injured host,” he says.
“It turns out that all these functions involve incredibly complex pathways and it’s difficult to tease out all of the elements of these pathways in a meaningful way. And because we can’t define every event that could possibly happen, we want to come up with a model of events that lead to these biochemical signals taking place.”
The new CSET will bring together computational scientists, mathematicians, biologists, chemists and engineers, as well as several industry partners – Servier, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, Astra Zeneca, Ark Therapeutics, Protagen and Siemens.
The trick will be to work on questions that keep everyone in such a diverse group interested while pulling together towards a common goal, says Kolch.
“The time when you had one person working on one molecule is over, that doesn’t really have an impact any more. Now you really need teams who work together on a programme to achieve impact.”