Systems Biology of Mitotic Transition Control Mechanisms

There is a need which drives Systems Biology. It relies on an increasing knowledge on a cell’s constitutive elements, accompanied by a simultaneous lack of comparable knowledge on the ensuing interactions and organizing principles that govern them. Computer science already proved fruitful in biology, and it now appears as increasingly difficult to study complex cellular functions without the help of computational, modeling approaches.

We shall refer to our work as to "Systems Biology of Mitosis" and we benefit from modeling and simulation approaches embedded in a cross-disciplinary framework, in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of mitotic regulatory mechanisms. The main focus of our research is to understand the Spindle Positioning Checkpoint (SPOC), Mitotic Exit Network (MEN) and Cytokinesis regulations. We use dynamical modeling based on bio-molecular networks.. We benefit from non-linear differential equations (ordinary, partial and stochastic) as well as stochastic spatial- simulation and rule-base approaches.