Structural bioinformatics and network biology group

Proteins are the main perpetrators of most cellular tasks. However, they seldom act alone and most biological processes are carried out by macromolecular assemblies and regulated through a complex network of protein-protein interactions. Thus, modern molecular and cell biology no longer focus on single macromolecules but now look into complexes, pathways or even entire organisms. The many genomesequencing initiatives have provided a near complete list of the components present in an organism, and post-genomic projects have aimed to catalogue the relationships between them. The emerging field of systems biology is now centred mainly on unraveling these relationships. However, all these interaction maps lack molecular details: they tell us who interacts with whom, but not how. A full understanding of how molecules interact can be attained only from high resolution three-dimensional (3D) structures, since these provide crucial atomic details about binding. These details allow a more rational design of experiments to disrupt an interaction and therefore to perturb any system in which the interaction is involved. Our main scientific interests are in the field of structural bioinformatics and network biology, in particular, the use of protein sequences and high-resolution 3D structures to reveal the molecular bases of how macromolecular complexes and cell networks operate. Structural bioinformatics and network biology group Patrick Aloy