Stellenbosch University

This is the exchange platform of the COMBINE network.

COMBINE is an initiative to coordinate the development of various community standards and formats for computational models: BioPax, CellML, NeuroML, Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language (SED-ML).

This programme is used to store published data files that are not available in other FAIRDOM projects. We specifically store information for journals that we collaborate with for technical curation of mathematical models. These files are used in COMBINE archives to reproduce journal figures.

The currently used mathematical models for medical treatment at the individual or population level are largely phenomenological and have limited quantitative predictive power. It is usually not possible to predict the effect of an intervention in a specific process or to predict the effect of a pharmaceutical drug since the step or enzyme on which the intervention/drug works is not explicit in the model.

Taking HIV pathogenesis as an example, the immune system response, vaccine exposure, and drug ...

The goal of the project is to establish a new biotechnological platform for the production of hydroxy-amino acids, since the current production of these important building blocks is very expensive. Enzyme engineering, systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering will be used in a synthetic biology approach.

The Molecular Systems Biology project holds information for reproducing simulation figures in the journal. This can include experimental data files, model files and manuscript information.

Hypoglycaemia and lactic acidosis are key diagnostics for poor chances of survival in malaria patients. In this project we aim to test to what extent the metabolic activity of Plasmodium falciparum contributes to a changed glucose metabolism in malaria patients. The approach is to start with detailed bottom up models for the parasite and then merge these with more coarse grained models at the whole body level.