Center’s Aims

Conduct Five Interrelated Core Projects to Uncover Organizational Principles Giving Rise to Transcriptional Regulatory Network Robustness to Physiological, Developmental and Evolutionary Inputs and Pressures

The Center’s scientific program will focus on the dynamics of transcriptional networks in physiological, developmental and evolutionary time scales. A unifying intellectual goal in all the projects is to increase our mechanistic understanding of how and why transcriptional networks are robust to physiological, mutational and evolutionary forces. We will develop methods to measure transcriptional network robustness, as well as models of the behavior of a set of well-defined and broadly representative transcriptional regulatory networks during physiological stress, during cellular and organismal development, and during the evolution of species.

Establish Core Research Infrastructure Supporting Center Activities and Stimulating Development of New Technology

Infrastructure to support and develop novel technologies will be established, including a recombineering core, development of new imaging and microfluidics technology for recording data from arrays of single cells and single embryos, and an interactive data management system specific for the proposed project. We will establish a critical mass in computational modeling where experts in different areas of transcriptional network modeling interact and explore new methods for predictive modeling of the networks studied in the Center.

Center Leadership Development to Promote Systems Biology Research and Education in Chicago

The Center will promote and anchor Systems Biology research in Chicago. This will be achieved at multiple levels including new educational initiatives, outreach programs and dissemination activities (see Education).