Systems biology aims to record and describe the dynamic molecular processes inside a cell, and to present these processes in the form of computerized mathematical models. Data are gathered from the cell’s different information-levels including the genome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and fluxome. Integrated, these data represent all cell processes which can be described by predictive, mathematical models. The field of systems biology is highly interdisciplinary, including molecular genetics and biochemistry, cell- and microbiology, analysis and instrumentation and mathematics and statistics.

By understanding the factors controlling a cell’s growth and metabolism, systems biology has recently found its way into several fields as a new approach offering a better understanding of the cell and thereby new possibilities for engineering the cell or its environment. In medicine, systems biology improves the understanding of the source of the illness itself, rather than its symptoms, thereby offering new tools for curing diseases. Within biochemical process development, improved understanding of the cell as a biochemical factory leads researchers towards engineering of new and improved biochemical processes for various products such as antibiotics. Predictive models will offer a possibility to run in silico experiments, dramatically improving the research efficiency.

Our research group is involved in two large research projects within the European transnational research initiative on Systems Biology for Microorganisms (SysMO). One project is focusing on a controllable production of an extracellular polysaccharide (alginate) as a model system for developing mathematical models that understand and predict the dramatic change within the cell when going from a state of no alginate production to a state in which a major part of the carbohydrates supplied to the cell is channeled to alginate production. Another project is focusing on the understanding of the major change in the cell’s metabolic and regulatory network upon shifting from primary metabolism (cell growth) to secondary metabolism (e.g. antibiotic production). Our department’s main contributions in these projects are controlled cultivation (chemostat and batch) and sample generation, in addition to intracellular and extracellular metabolome analyses in close cooperation with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Additionally, our research group is involved in systems biology with industrial partners towards the development of improved and new bioprocesses for commercial products.