Prof. Dr. E. Bornberg-Bauer
Reconstruction of Pathways
Modelling and simulation of biochemical pathways has until recently been the domain of theoretical biology and biophysics. The availability of large datasets from
genome, transcriptome and proteome suggests that, by combination with metabolome data, we will be able to reconstruct the biochemistry of a cell by comparative
pathway analysis. The underlying assumption is the same rationale as for comparative sequence analysis: similar structure implies similar function because of
common evolutionary ancestors.
We work on the development and prototypic application of an integrated framework which will, exploiting existing knowledge about the biochemistry from other
organisms, enable us to suggest a cell's biochemical network. Conversely, one can use the knowledge of the network to improve functional prediction of single genes.
Where computationally feasible and based on sufficiently reliable experimental data we also attempt to simulate biochemical pathways by computing the
spatio-temporal dynamics of metabolite concentrations.
More recently, our research focused on
the evolution of pathways which should help us to understand how robustness against perturbation or auto-regulation can be constructed. We investigate how
often domain-fusion events occur within logical units of pathways and how often logical units are co-regulated. The long term goal is to reveal general commonly
underlying principles of pathway evolution such as the pathwork or the retrograde theory. Eventually, these methods should support biotechnological research by
suggesting experiments for biochemical engineering since the identification and modification of logical units can help steer experiments towards feasible solutions.
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