O'Really?

Genomes to Systems is a biannual conference held in Manchester covering the latest post-genome developments. Here are some brief and incomplete notes on some of the speakers and topics from the third and final day of the 2008 conference.

1. Plenary lecture by James Ferrell, Stanford University: Systems-level properties of the mitotic oscillator

Session one: Systems Biology in Time: Dynamic Cellular Processes

2. Mike White, Liverpool University: Temporal and spatial information encoding by the NF-κB system
3. Olivier Pourquié, Kansas City: Periodic patterns in embryonic development: the vertebrate segmentation clock
4. Andrew Millar, University of Edinburgh: Unwinding the biological clock using Arabidopsis thaliana and Neurospora crassa, presented work from Plant circadian clocks increase photosynthesis, growth, survival, and competitive advantage and elsewhere describing differences between oscillators and circadian rhythms in photoperiodism.
5. Béla Novák, University of Oxford: Systems Biology of the cell cycle: the spring of protein synthesis vs. protein degradation

Lunch, followed by workshops from the European Bioinformatics Institute

• Sandra Orchard, Data resources for proteomics, a quick run through various EBI resources including new tools like the Protein Identifier Cross-Reference Service (PICR) which converts pretty much anything to anything else, like EMBOSS SeqRet for protein identifiers.
• Esther Schmidt, Reactome : a curated knowledgebase of biological pathways, reactome.org, introduction to reactome, outlined simple data model, e.g. Reactant, Input(s), Output(s), is a model used to describe many different things from pathways to signal transduction and translocation.

Afternoon session: Systems Biology from Microbe to Planet: Understanding lots of data through comprehensive models

1. Masaru Tomita, “Tommy”, Keio University, Japan: Multi-omics analysis and integrative systems biology
2. Matthius Reuss, Stuttgart: Unravelling regulatory networks in liver hepatocytes on the basis of time-series data
3. Steve Oliver, University of Cambridge: Yeast: The Big Experiment, see Growth control of the eukaryote cell: a systems biology study in yeast
4. David J. Richardson, UEA, Norwich: The global nitrogen cycle: where micro becomes tera, see nitrous oxide.org: focus group
5. Short presentation from Gabriella Pastori from the BBSRC on national and international funding activities in systems biology, including

Closing plenary lecture: Hans Westerhoff: From Genomes to Systems to… dealing with networks, covering robustness and fragility in networks involved in cancer and sleeping sickness. Summary of conference and look into future, e.g. digital human.

[See also Steve Checkley’s summary of day 3]