GRK 1563:  Regulation and Evolution of Cellular Systems

• Subject Area: Basic Research in Biology and Medicine
• Term: from 2009 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 88512095

The International Research Training Group brings together researchers from two Munich universities (LMU and TUM) and the Moscow State University.
The central theme of the research programme, the regulation and evolution of cellular systems, serves to unite research groups from several disciplines and promote collaboration between theoreticians and experimentalists to model and understand similarities and differences in the logic and quantitative behaviour of regulatory networks among species based on high-throughput expression data. The central research question is addressed with a major focus on phosphoproteomics data shared among the individual projects via a workflow scheme implementing our approach. Within this framework, there are three main research topics: (1) comparative genomics of metabolic and regulatory systems; (2) network-based interpretation of transcriptome and proteome data; (3) posttranscriptional regulation mechanisms.
The Research Training Group encourages the exchange of knowledge and personnel among various labs, producing a synergistic effect that will allow for much greater progress to be made in very complex, emerging fields such as systems biology. At the centre of the Research Training Group is a graduate programme with the aim of educating PhD students in all fields necessary for understanding complex biological systems. This programme builds upon the highly successful bachelor/master/diploma programmes in bioinformatics that have been offered in Munich since 2000 and in Moscow since 2002. The advantage of the Research Training Group PhD programme is that it forms a network of graduate students addressing a common set of problems with a diverse array of interdisciplinary tools. This is ensured with the central research focus via the implementation and the innovative concept of the Research Training Group enabling and requiring both competitive individual PhD projects as well as cooperation via sharing of data and models.
Students will receive both theoretical and experimental training and will have the opportunity to learn specialised skills from participating labs at all three universities. Thus, their training will go well beyond of what is normally provided within a single academic faculty, department or group. The output will be a new generation of scientists who are able to explore the vast amounts of genetic, genomic and proteomic data that are being produced and integrate them into a new understanding of how cellular processes are regulated.

• DFG Programme: International Research Training Groups
• International Connection: Russia
• Applicant Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Technische Universität München (TUM)
• IRTG-Partner Institution: Lomonosov Moscow State University
• Participating Institution: Helmholtz Zentrum München; Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Gesundheit und Umwelt; Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie (MPIB)
• Spokespersons: Professor Dr. Dmitrij Frishman; Professor Dr. Ralf Zimmer
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Volker Heun; Professor Dr. Stefan Kramer; Professor Dr. Matthias Mann; Professor Dr. Hans-Werner Mewes; Professor Dr. John Parsch; Professor Dr. Karsten Suhre
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Vladimir Aleshin; Professor Alexey Alexeevsky; Professor Andrey A. Mironov; Professor Dr. Vladimir I. Muronets; Professor Dr. Vytas Svedas
• IRTG-Partner: Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Mikhail Gelfand