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Strategies to Investigate Signal Transduction Pathways with Mathematical Modelling

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Systems Biology for Signaling Networks

Part of the book series: Systems Biology ((SYSTBIOL))

Abstract

Systems biology is an approach by which biological questions are addressed through integrating experiments in iterative cycles with computational modelling, simulation and theory. Systems biology is particularly suitable for the study of cell signalling systems because of the inherent complexity of the signalling networks, the amount and variety of the quantitative data combined for their analysis and some special features of cell signalling systems. Among these features we include the prevalence of transient activation processes and the emergence of non-linear behaviour such as signal amplification, ultrasensitivity, multistability and self-sustained oscillations. In this book chapter we discuss the elements of a systems biology methodology for the investigation of cell signalling systems and illustrate it with a number of examples.

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Acknowledgments

The work of J.V. was supported by the FORSYS initiative of the German Ministry of Science (BMBF) as a part of the CALSYS project (http://www.sbi.uni-rostock.de/calsys). O.W. acknowledges support from the ExCell project at the Center for Logic, Philosophy and History of Science, University of Rostock, funded by the regional government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Ministry for Education, Science and Culture (Project Nr. 62327030). S.N. is funded by DAAD-Bulgarian National Science Fund project DO02-23/05.3.2009

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Biology and Bioinformatics Group, University of Rostock, 18051, Rostock, Germany

    Julio Vera, Svetoslav Nikolov & Olaf Wolkenhauer

  2. Institute of Mechanics and Biomechanics, Bulgarian Academy of Science, 1113, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Svetoslav Nikolov

Authors
  1. Julio Vera
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  2. Svetoslav Nikolov
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  3. Olaf Wolkenhauer
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Correspondence to Julio Vera .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Natural Science, Dept. Biological Science, Department of Molecular Science and Tech, Suwon, 442-749, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Sangdun Choi

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Vera, J., Nikolov, S., Wolkenhauer, O. (2010). Strategies to Investigate Signal Transduction Pathways with Mathematical Modelling. In: Choi, S. (eds) Systems Biology for Signaling Networks. Systems Biology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5797-9_8

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