Center for Quantitative Biology

To probe the complexities of living systems, the National
Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), has established its
fifth Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems
Research. The new center, headed by David Botstein, Ph.D.,
at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., will explore
how biological molecules interact with each other and their
environment to create dynamic systems.

NIGMS will award $3 million to the center this year and
expects the project to total $14.8 million over 5 years.
Central to the effort is the integration of
multidisciplinary research and teaching. In addition to
bringing together 40 scientists from physical,
computational and biological science fields, the center
will establish a new undergraduate and graduate curriculum
at Princeton that focuses on quantitative biology and
collaborative research.

“The most challenging problems in biology are best tackled
by combining the expertise of researchers from diverse
backgrounds,” said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., NIH director.
“Through its multidisciplinary collaboration and
curriculum, this center will not only yield new insights
about complex biological processes, it will also train the
research leaders of tomorrow.”

Called the Center for Quantitative Biology, the effort will
focus on three key biological questions: how body patterns
are established during an organism’s early development, how
cells control their internal functions and communicate with
each other, and how viruses interact with host cells. The
researchers will use state-of-the-art microscopes and
imaging tools to examine molecules in living cells and
tissues. They will also create gene chips to study the
activities of genes from viruses, bacteria, yeast, mice,
rats and humans.

A key feature of the project is the use of advanced
computational methods to model complex biological systems
based on large quantities of experimental data, a systems
biology approach. To help spur further biomedical
discoveries, the center will make all its data and analysis
tools freely available to the scientific community.

The goals and approaches of the center fit squarely with
the NIGMS mission, according to Jeremy M. Berg, Ph.D.,
NIGMS director.

“The Princeton center advances NIGMS efforts to move into
new areas of science, foster multidisciplinary
collaboration, and enhance research training. It also joins
ongoing NIGMS initiatives to recruit quantitative
scientists and harness computer modeling approaches for
biological research. By bringing together computational and
experimental scientists, the center promises to accelerate
the pace of scientific discovery and serve as a model for
an important new way of doing biomedical research and
education,” said Berg.


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