Biocomplexity

The usefulness of computational methods to the study of complex factors (e.g. gene or protein networks, protein structure, molecular profiles) regulating physiological function can scarcely be overstated.

Researchers in this group are trained in informatics, computer sciences and modeling disciplines making them experts at developing and applying computational approaches to understanding living systems.

The research focus in this area is to study the systems biology of interactions among large networks of genes, proteins, protein modifications, and metabolites.

Participating faculty and their students may determine protein structure (e.g. X-ray diffraction, NMR, circular dichroism) to make predictions about the physiologic regulation of function at the molecular level while others utilize molecular dynamics to evaluate the structural flexing of entire proteins as they function or use multi-modal experimental approaches to assess changes in molecular profiles.

This Area of Excellence benefits from the strong institutional core resources for NMR and computation at UC, including access to grid-enabled supercomputer resources, a vast array of modeling software tools, and collaborations with national resource centers that can generate large-scale primary data.