Microbial Systems
The mission of the Microbial Systems node is to increase our understanding of the mechanisms of microbial growth and function and to develop local expertise in systems approaches to biological questions, with the aim of establishing a Center of Excellence in Systems Microbiology at IUB. The knowledge acquired through these efforts will be used to help fight infectious diseases and to harness the useful properties of microbes to benefit society.
MS Focus Areas
- Global analysis of the bacterial cell. The Microbial Systems Node seeks to provide a global understanding
of bacterial cells at the molecular level by focusing on a limited number of bacterial model systems. We invite proposals
for the utilization of global approaches, includingfunctional genomics, gene expression profiling, proteomics, and
metabolomics to understand complex cellular processes and their integration. While the main focus of the Microbial
Systems Node will be on projects to understand bacterial systems, we will also consider proposals that deal with other
microbial systems.
- Microbial interactions. The interaction of microbes with other microbes and with other biological systems
plays a critical role in the environment, in industry, and in human health. We invite proposals to understand microbial
interactions at the mechanistic and at the global level. Examples of questions of interest include: How do cells form
the surface-associated multicellular communities called biofilms? How does multicellular behavior differ from the
behavior of isolated cells at the regulatory and metabolic levels? How are symbiotic and pathogenic relationships
established and what are their mechanisms? Proposals that deal with symbiosis and pathogenesis should focus on the
role of the microbe in the interaction.
- Systems Microbiology. One of the major goals of the Microbial Systems Node is to develop a Center of Excellence in Systems Microbiology. We seek proposals that will develop the local expertise in Systems approaches using any microbial system. These proposals should combine experimentation and modeling. Proposals that consist solely of the development of models will not be considered. Rather, we seek proposals where the interplay between modeling and experimentation is clear and in which the predictions provided by modeling will be tested experimentally and lead to refinement of the models. Ideally, there should be many iterations of the experimentation-modeling cycle.
