Integrative Systems Biology

Group leader: Søren Brunak
Members: Anders Boeck Jensen, Eva Roitmann, Helle Krogh Pedersen, Isa Kirk, Jens Friis-Nielsen, Jose Maria Gonzalez-Izarzugaza, Karine Audouze, Kasper Lage Hansen, Kirstine C. Belling, Li Jiang, Mette Kristina Beck, Mia Dybkjær Rønsholdt, Peter Løngreen, Piotr Dworzynski, Tune Hannes Pers, Valborg Gudmundsdottir
Guest members: Agnieszka Sierakowska Juncker, Chris Workman, Henrik Bjørn Nielsen, Pope Moseley

Catalog of previous student projects.

About the group

The Integrative Systems Biology Group is at the leading edge of these developments, focusing mainly on understanding how intracellular networks of genes, proteins, metabolites and other small molecules regulate cellular behavior and how perturbations to these regulatory systems may lead to disease for the individual.

Our research strategies typically rely on integration of massive amounts of experimental data rather than just on theoretical modeling. Pathways and protein complexes are key levels of analysis helping to understand how genetic changes in many different molecular components lead to the same or similar phenotypes. The ongoing effort in the group is to construct such models that will aid the identification of new disease genes and in uncovering the mechanisms behind complex, multifactoral diseases.

The group also works on combining molecular level systems biology data with medical informatics data from the healthcare sector, such as for example electronic patient records and biobank questionnaires. The aim is to combine and stratify patients not only from their genotypes, but also phenotypically based on the clinical descriptions in the medical records which describe disease histories in detail.

If you are interested in learning more about the group or our work, please contact the group coordinator Kirstine Christensen Belling.

2008-Dec-28 This week, reseachers from the Integrative Systems Biology group at CBS have created a catalogue of tissue-specific processes involved in hundreds of inherited diseases. These results could help treat diseases such as breast cancer, Parkinson disease, heart diseases and autism, and is the result of a collaboration between CBS, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. Read more here:
[English Press release] [Article in PNAS] [Pubmed]

2007-Mar-12 New research, published in this weeks issue of Nature Biotechnology, show that genes involved in the development of inherited diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, work together in protein complexes. This knowledge has been used to predict new genes involved in hundreds of diseases such as sclerosis and type 2-diabetes. Read more here:
[Danish Press release] [Article in Nature Biotechnology] [Pubmed]

2006-Oct-5 This week, the Journal Nature publishes exciting new results from the Brunak and Bork groups which reveal that despite the fact that many of the core cell cycle protein complexes are conserved during evolution, their regulation has evolved considerably. The results are in perfect agreement with the just-in-time assembly principle that we proposed last year for yeast and even demonstrate a hitherto undescribed tendency for co-evolution of different layers of regulation. Read more here:
[Danish Press release] [Article in Nature] [Commentary in Nature] [Pubmed] [Supplementary Information]

2006-Apr-21 New work published in the international journal Molecular Cell provides insight into the composition and function of the human subcellular structure known as the Nucleolus. The work is a prime example of how integration of already published biological data can be analyzed to reveal novel aspects, not visible from any single type of data alone. Read more here:
[Molecular Cell] [PubMed] [Supplementary Information]

2005-Feb-4 The international journal Science today publishes new insight into the systemic aspect of cell cycle regulation in the model organism, bakers yeast. The research, which has been conducted in collaboration with Lars Juhl Jensen and Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, reveals that only some subunits of protein complexes are regulated during the cell cycle, but always such that the regulation ensures assembly of the functional complex just-in-time for action. Read more here:
[Press release] [Commentary in Nature Reviews] [Science Magazine] [PubMed] [Supplementary Information]