Team:Shanghaitech/ChenLuonan
Chen Luonan
Professor Chen is the director of the Key Laboratory of Systems Biology, Shanghai Institute of Biology Science. His current researches focus on network biology and computational biology. For his view on modeling in complex molecular biology system, our team members visited him and benefited from his insight in modeling biological system.
As an expert in systems biology and corresponding modeling works, could you share with us your experience in modeling quorum sensing systems?
“I had experience working on quorum sensing about 8 years ago when I switched my interest to network biology of complex diseases. I’m pretty familiar with your project’s background. You’ve asked about Hill equation’s weakness in presenting stochastic process. In my opinion, it’s not so important to focus on stochastic in your case. You can use the mean field to bypass this problem. Improvement of modeling can still be achieved in the presence of Hill equation, which is not perfect but still the first choice to solve chemical dynamic problems.”
What are your suggestions on unifying model and data?
“Every computational biologist may face this problem to some extent. To me, it’s still a question without a standard answer. My suggestion is that you’d better clarify essential factors for the case you are working on., The prototype model should be fulfilled as much as you can. I have written a book <Modeling Biomolecular Networks in Cells>, in which I discussed about unifying model and data. The quorum sensing system was also described as a typical case in this book and I suppose it can be used as your reference.”
Our ambition is to set up a modularized signal process system of synthetic biology and facilitate the public to participate in this subject. Do you have any comments on this goal?
“In my opinion, setting up a modularized and standard system for biology research is always meaningful, since not only the public but also other iGEM teams can benefit from your work. In addition, despite of the difficulty to build a biological signal system, your attempt to set up a platform may bring other iGEMers together to work on interesting quorum sensing related biology questions."
