University Duisburg-Essen

Background. RB1 is a paradigm gene for heritable cancer. Almost all RB1 mutation-carriers develop retinoblastoma (heritable-Rb-patient) during childhood and many heritable-Rb-survivors develop second primary malignancies (SPMs; notably sarcomas and melanomas) throughout life, which are often fatal. To date, no standard protocols are available for early detection of SPMs. Recently, blood-based cancer tests have opened up encouraging new possibilities for surveillance. We have developed novel ...

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is the self-governing organisation for science and research in Germany. It serves all branches of science and the humanities. In organisational terms, the DFG is an association under private law. Its membership consists of German research universities, non-university research institutions, scientific associations and the Academies of Science and the Humanities.

ERA CoBioTech is an ERA-Net Cofund Action under H2020, which aims to strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in the field of Biotechnology through enhanced cooperation and coordination of different national and regional research programs, promoting systems biology and synthetic biology as technology driversto speed up research and innovation in industrial biotechnology.

› By maximizing synergies between current mechanisms of biotechnology research funding in Europe; › By fostering the exchange ...

The main objective of the ERANET proposal Systems Biology Applications - ERASysAPP (app = application = translational systems biology) is to promote multidimensional and complementary European systems biology projects, programmes and research initiatives on a number of selected research topics. Inter alia, ERASysAPP will initiate, execute and monitor a number of joint transnational calls on systems biology research projects with a particular focus on applications - or in other words so called ...

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 ...

SysMO is a European transnational funding and research initiative on "Systems Biology of Microorganisms".

The goal pursued by SysMO was to record and describe the dynamic molecular processes going on in unicellular microorganisms in a comprehensive way and to present these processes in the form of computerized mathematical models.

Systems biology will raise biomedical and biotechnological research to a new quality level and contribute markedly to progress in understanding. Pooling European research ...

e:Bio - Innovations Competition Systems Biology

Rationale: Individuals with a cancer predisposition due to a mutation in the paradigm tumor suppressor gene RB1, have a high risk to develop the childhood cancer retinoblastoma (Rb). Biopsies are not possible in Rb, before treatment selection. Heritable Rb patients have also a high risk to develop other types of second primary, either childhood or adult, malignancies (SPMs), notably sarcomas and melanomas. Remarkably, SPMs are now the leading cause of death in heritable-Rb-survivors. Unfortunately, ...

Background- Thermophilic organisms are composed of both bacterial and archaeal species. The enzymes isolated from these species and from other extreme habitats are more robust to temperature, organic solvents and proteolysis. They often have unique substrate specificities and originate from novel metabolic pathways. Thermophiles as well as their stable enzymes (‘thermozymes’) are receiving increased attention for biotechnological applications.

The proposed project will establish thermophilic in ...

Cyanobacteria are the only prokaryotes performing oxygenic photosynthesis. Theyhad and have tremendous influence on the biogeochemical cycles on Earth. Recently,cyanobacteria are increasingly investigated as cell factories for a sustainableeconomy. Despite their global, environmental and rising economic importance, ourknowledge on the regulation of their primary metabolism is fragmented.Cyanobacteria switch between photoautotrophic and heterotrophic modes ofmetabolism during day/night cycles or ...

Silicon cell model for the central carbohydrate metabolism of the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus under temperature variation

Biomining is a biotechnological process carried out in many parts of the world that exploits acid loving microorganisms to extract metals from sulphide minerals. One industrial biomining method is called ‘heap bioleaching’ where typically copper containing minerals are piled into very large heaps, acid and microorganisms are added to the top and the soluble metal is collected at the heap base.

The role of the different types of microbes in the process is to speed up metal solubilisation by oxidising ...

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.

Within the e:Bio - Innovationswettbewerb Systembiologie (Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)), the SulfoSYSBIOTECH consortium (10 partners), aim to unravel the complexity and regulation of the carbon metabolic network of the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus (optimal growth at 80°C and pH 3) in order to provide new catalysts ‘extremozymes’ for utilization in White Biotechnology.

Based on the available S. solfataricus genome scale metabolic model (Ulas et al., 2012) ...