HU Research Team Develops a New Model of Cellular Signal Transduction Networks
The effects of cell mutations can now be better understood.
Cellular signal transduction networks are essential for the functioning of cells. Damage to them can result in serious disorders such as cancer. Signalling networks are extremely complex, and understanding how they function is one of the great challenges of biology. Using the example of cell division in yeast, a research team at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) led by Professor Edda Klipp and Dr. Marcus Krantz has for the first time developed a genome-scale mechanistic model that provides a better understanding of the effects of mutations and other disruptions of the signalling network. The model, which has now been published in a study in Nature Communications, helps in investigating how signals are reproduced through cells. The model is based on a new method that the team developed in collaboration with Professor Stefan Hohmann in Sweden and Professor Hiroaki Kitano in Japan.
The cellular signal transduction receives information from outside the cell, such as hormones, growth factors or physical signals, as well as from the cell interior, for example, the nutritional status. It forwards this information to regulatory processes that enable the cell to adapt. The correct functioning of signal transduction networks determines the health and disease of the single cell and possibly of the entire organism.
Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Professor Edda Klipp, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institute for Biology, telephone: 030 2093-46359, email: edda.klipp@rz.hu-berlin.de
Dr. Marcus Krantz, email: mktz75@gmail.com
Originalpublikation:
Münzner U., Klipp E, Krantz M. (2019) A comprehensive, mechanistically detailed, and executable model of the cell division cycle in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nat. Commun. 2019 Mar 21;10(1):1308.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08903-w