Research Overview

My research involves the systems level study of biological systems using a network analysis approach originating from statistical physics. I am interested in both the modeling of cellular processes and the analysis of the emerging global properties of large scale cellular networks. I find it very powerful to analyze and interpret experimental data produced by ever improving biological techniques that will shed light into genotype-phenotype relationships. The aim of my research is to increase the understanding of the effects of perturbations on cellular networks and the pathways to diseases.

Recent project 1: Bringing a molecular level understanding (genes/proteins and how they function as a whole) to population disease patterns (see details).

Recent project 2: Building viral disease networks and discover pathways that lead to diseases (link soon).

Selected Research Highlights

Genotype-phenotype relationships

from MSB publication: systematic identification of compensatory rescue effects using a constraint-based network approach.

Double gene deletions in suboptimal S. cerevisiae in glucose minimal medium. Delta G signifies the growth rate difference between the double gene mutant and single gene mutant. Positive Delta G indicates the cases where we observe extreme genetic alleviations.

Structure and dynamics of cellular networks

from PRL publication: investigation of the local organization of directed networks. We find that many real networks often have very few short loops as compared to random models.

from PRL publication: in random boolean and threshold networks identification of a new characteristic connectivity K_s, at which the average number of damaged nodes after a large number of dynamical updates is independent of system size.