More on Episode 8: Working the system
7.8 mb mp3 (16:57 ) | Subscribe through iTunes
Peter Sorger shares his perspectives on the emerging field of systems biology
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HMS professor Peter Sorger runs one of the six NIH-funded national centers of systems biology. Using an interdisciplinary strategy that incorporates molecular biology, mathematics, computer science, and biophysics (to name but a few relevant fields), his team explores the biological processes at play in cell death and cell proliferation. Currently, they’re looking at single-cell, mouse, and human models to find out how environmental cues and internal genetics influence cell death in colonic epithelial cells and liver tissue.
Sorger has said that one of his research goals is to “revitalize pharmacology through systems biology.” With that in mind, he aspires to bring the theories of systems biology into clinical practice, bearing on such medical quandaries as drug resistance and the variability of disease targets.
Sorger recently migrated to HMS from MIT, where he co-founded the systems biology program. He also co-founded Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and Glencoe Software and advises a number of other technology companies.
Sorger bio
HMS Department of Systems Biology
Cell Division Process Center
2.2 mb mp3 (2:24) with additional excerpts from Veronica Meade-Kelly’s interview with Sorger
Researchers use mathematical models to probe the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria
The gospel according to clinicians has been to attack pathogens with as much killing power as possible. In the case of bugs resistant to antimicrobial drugs, they bring out the big guns, combining drugs that together are more powerful than the sum of their individual effects.
Counterintuitively, however, the better weapon in the long run may be combinations of drugs that actually decrease one another’s effectiveness. Antagonistic pairs, though they do not have the same immediate lethality as synergistic blends, are much better at both slowing and preventing the evolution of resistant strains, according to two studies from the lab of Roy Kishony, HMS associate professor of systems biology.
—Summary by Beth Dougherty
Kishony lab
Focus Newsletter story
The human brain makes an evolutionary jump
It comes as no surprise that for particular functions, what goes on in a mouse brain may be very different from what goes on in a human brain. According to new research from the lab of HMS professor of pathology Bruce Yankner, the human and mouse brains have evolutionarily diverged to the point where certain fundamentals of the aging process are diametrically opposed. The discovery sheds light on why researchers have not yet successfully modeled neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse.
