University of Groningen

PoLiMeR is funded through the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN), which drives scientific excellence and innovation. ITNs bring together universities, research institutes, industry and clinical partners from across the world to train researchers to doctorate level.

Metabolic diseases are a burden on the European population and health care system. It is increasingly recognised that individual differences with respect to history, lifestyle, and genetic make-up affect disease
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MESI-STRAT: Systems Medicine of Metabolic-Signaling Networks -A New Concept for Breast Cancer Patient Stratification.
Breast cancer is a complex disease with high prevalence in the European Union and world-wide. 75%-80 of the patients have estrogen receptor-positive (ER)-positive tumors and are treated with endocrine therapies. Endocrine therapies, which block ER-driven tumor growth, show high efficacy. Yet, a significant proportion of the patients will eventually relapse with metastatic breast
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Global metabolic switching in Streptomyces coelicolor

Antibiotics are made during the second phase of growth when there is a transition in metabolism from primary to secondary metabolism. Primary metabolism is growth related and involves all the normal cellular activities associated with cell growth and division. Whereas secondary metabolism is non-growth linked and is non-essential but many important activities occur during this phase which help the bacterium survive.

Short-chain fatty-acids (SCFA) are produced from dietary fibres by the intestinal microbiota. They protect humans against obesity. The fate of SCFA and their impact on human fat metabolism is complex and dynamic. To optimally apply prebiotic (fibre) and probiotic (microbial) supplements, a better understanding of their mode of action is required. Our aim is to construct, infer, and analyse a dynamic, multiscale computational model predicting how dietary fibres affect the balance between fat intake
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BaCell-SysMO 2
Modelling carbon core metabolism in Bacillus subtilis – Exploring the contribution of protein complexes in core carbon and nitrogen metabolism.

Bacillus subtilis is a prime model organism for systems biology approaches because it is one of the most advanced models for functional genomics. Furthermore, comprehensive information on cell and molecular biology, physiology and genetics is available and the European Bacillus community (BACELL) has a well-established reputation for applying
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Ion and solute homeostasis in enteric bacteria: an integrated view generated from the interface of modelling and biological experimentation

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

The SilicoTryp project aims at the creation of a “Silicon Trypanosome”, a comprehensive, experiment-based, multi-scale mathematical model of trypanosome physiology.
Trypanosomes are blood-stream parasites transmitted by tsetse flies; they cause African sleeping sickness in humans and livestock. Currently available drugs have severe side effects, and the parasites are rapidly developing resistance.
In this project, we collect a wide range of new experimental data on the parasite in its various
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Bistable switches are the key elements of the regulatory networks governing cell development, differentiation and life-strategy decisions. Transcriptional noise is a main determinant that causes switching between different states in bistable systems. By using the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae as a model bacterium, we will investigate how transcriptional fidelity and processivity influence (noisy) gene expression and participate in bistability. To study this question, we will use both
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