Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Five research projects in the Computational Life Sciences (CLS) will jointly receive an amount of €2.5 million from NWO Physical Sciences (NWO-EW), the Netherlands Bioinfomatics Centre (NBIC) and the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI). Using yet to be developed models, the projects will give new insight into the working of biological networks, such as corals, the immune system or the activity of genes. All the projects involve a unique collaboration between biologists, mathematicians and computer scientists.
The amount of biological data, e.g. about the genome, is increasing exponentially. This enormous wealth of information enables the system-based design of experiments, finding patterns and making models. Applying analysis methods drawn from bioinformatics and biomathematics in the integration of biological data collections leads to new scientific insights.
Biological networks
The CLS programme hooks up with this development. The projects design new concepts and techniques for studying biological networks. These lead to models that can describe the network properties at various time and space scales. Result: new insights in biological networks; enhanced biological understanding; scale bridging.
Theme Systems Biology
The initiators of CLS (NWO, NGI and NBIC) aspire to realise structural cooperation between specialists in bioinformatics, biomathematics and life sciences. This ambition makes the programme highly compatible with the NWO theme Systems Biology. Grants by the CLS are the first initiatives within the framework of this theme. A total of three subsidy rounds took place: in 2003, 2007 and 2008, whereby an amount of €10 million was divided among 26 projects. The National Computing Facilities foundation (NCF) provided machine time (or data storage) on its computers.
Grants
NWO Physical Sciences, the coordinator of the programme, received a total of 41 proposals during the recent subsidy round. Five project proposals were judged as excellent by an expert committee and received a grant of € 460,000. These projects are:
The evolution of stochastic heterogeneous networks as bet-hedging adaptations to fluctuating environments
Principal applicant: Dr P. Haccou (Leiden University)
Reverse physiology of the cortical microcircuit
Principal applicant: Dr. A.R. Houweling (Erasmus MC)
Multi-scale modelling of calcification in scleractinian corals
Principal applicant: Dr. J.A. Kaandorp (University of Amsterdam)
The co-evolution of the receptor signaling network of natural killer cells with its ligands
Principal applicant: Prof. Dr R.J. de Boer (Utrecht University)
The regulatory network underlying malaria parasite-host interactions
Principal applicant: Dr T.M.H. Dijkstra (Radboud University Nijmegen)