The Molecular Systems Biology group studies the control and regulation of cellular processes using theory, computer modelling and experimental approaches. A main project to quantitatively understand the functional behavior of Biological Systems as a function of the characteristics of their components. by the development of a theoretical framework, based on control analysis, for describing metabolic regulation in an integrative cellular context that includes metabolism, signal transduction and the genetic hierarchy; aspects of this theory are studied experimentally in unicellular organisms, e.g. yeast, bacteria and Plasmodium falciparum, using controlled cultivation in bioreactors and quantitative analysis with HPLC, mass spectroscopy and NMR.
The group is active in the field of computational systems biology, both in the development of kinetic models of real-life systems (sugarcane metabolism, comparative analysis of glycolysis in various organisms, yeast cell cycle), and of new modelling tools (PySCeS and JWS Online).