Systems and Synthetic Biology

Glasgow University is at the forefront of research in Systems and Synthetic Biology in the UK.

The picture on the left shows how a bubbleplot summarises the information contained in extremely complex metabolome measurements in a digestible manner and enable a first assessment of sample quality and major trends in the data (click to enlarge).

Dr Susan Rosser and Prof Rainer Breitling lead the activities within the Institute of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, working on the following topics:

1.    Building predictive computational models of complex biological systems, ranging from microbes to protozoan parasites and cancer cells [1,2]

2.    Developing software for the interpretation of large post-genomic datasets, including metabolomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics [3]

3.    Designing and constructing artificial modular genetic circuits or cells built from well-characterized parts and components, applying engineering principles to biological systems [4,5].

  The picture on the right shows a graphical representation of the metabolic networks of a wide variety of actinomycete bacteria, based on genome-scale reconstructions of the metabolic capacities of many species, identifies major topological features of universal bacterial core metabolism (click to enlarge).

Further reading:

[1] Bakker BM, Krauth-Siegel RL, Clayton C, Matthews K, Girolami M, Westerhoff HV, Michels PA, Breitling R, Barrett MP (2010) The silicon trypanosome. Parasitology 137(9):1333-41.

[2] Alam MT, Merlo ME; STREAM Consortium, Hodgson DA, Wellington EM, Takano E, Breitling R (2010) Metabolic modeling and analysis of the metabolic switch in Streptomyces coelicolor. BMC Genomics 11:202.

[3] Barrett MP, Bakker BM, Breitling R (2010) Metabolomic systems biology of trypanosomes. Parasitology 137(9):1285-90.

[4] Gu X, Trybiło M, Ramsay S, Jensen M, Fulton R, Rosser S, Gilbert D (2010) Engineering a novel self-powering electrochemical biosensor. Syst Synth Biol. 4(3):203-14.

[5] Medema MH, Breitling R, Bovenberg R, Takano E (2011) Exploiting plug-and-play synthetic biology for drug discovery and production in microorganisms. Nature Reviews Microbiol. 9(2):131-7.

The picture on left shows the projection of metabolome dynamics onto a metabolic map allows the systematic interpretation of changes observed in treated vs. control samples (click to enlarge).