 | Signal transduction
Necmettin Yildirim, Xiao Wang, Marcelo Behar, Tim Elston
In collaboration with Henrik Dohlman's laboratory |
A
main focus of
our laboratory is to
use computational and mathematical methods to discover and understand
control mechanisms used to regulate signaling pathways. In general,
signaling pathways are highly nonlinear and inherently noisy systems.
They often contain multiple feedback and feedforward loops and share
common functional components. Therefore, the broad questions we seek to
address are: What biological functions do feedback and feedforward
loops provide? Is noise reduction important for maintaining signaling
integrity? How is pathway specificity achieved?
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Motor proteins
Adrian Serohijos, John Fricks, Tim Elston
In collaboration with Nikolay Dokholyan's laboratory |
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Our
work on
molecular motors focuses on understanding the mechanisms used by these
molecules to convert free energy, stored in the forms of chemical bonds
or ion gradients, into mechanical work. We are also
interested in developing numerical methods for studying force
generation by molecular motors. Recently we have extended our methods
to include the biophysical properties of the linkage that connects the
motor to its cargo.
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Airway surface volume regulation
Peiyin Zuo, Chung-Seon Yi, Tim Elston
In collaboration with Richard Boucher and Cystic Fibrosis Center, UNC |
Motivated
by the
genetical lung disease cystic fibrosis (CF), we are interested in
understanding how the extracelllular nucleoti(si)de metabolism in the
airway surface and ion and water transport across the epithelial cell
membranes interact with each other to achieve the optimal airway
surface liquid and thus, maintain its critical role for the airway
clearance.
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Glycine metabolism
Abby Todd, Joy Poulos, Tim Elston
In collaboration with Kelvin Morgan and Jeffrey MacDonald's laboratory |
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A
fluxomics
method based on in vivo NMR spectroscopy is being used in Jeffrey
MacDonald's laboratory to measure metabolic fluxes in tissues and
organs. In collaboration with these experimental investigations, we are
developing a mathematical model to simulate glycine metabolism in the
liver.
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 | Noise
in gene expression
Xiao
Wang, Tim Elston
In collaboration with James Collins's laboratory |
In
this work an
engineered promoter that allowed the simultaneous
repression and activation of gene expression in Escherichia coli was
constructed and used to study synthetic gene networks under
increasingly complex conditions. A stochastic model that quantitatively
captured the means and
distributions of the expression from the engineered promoter of this
modular system was constructed and shown to accurately predict the in
vivo behavior of an expanded network that included positive feedback.
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Software development: BIONETS
David Adalsteinsson, David McMillen, Tim Elston
In collaboration with David Adalsteinsson group |  |
We
are also
interested in developing computational tools for studying stochastic
effects in signaling pathways and gene expression. With David
Adalsteinsson (Applied Mathematics, UNC), we have developed the
software package Biochemical Network Stochastic Simulator (BioNetS) for
efficiently and accurately simulating stochastic models of biochemical
networks.
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Diffusion and viscoelastic media
John Fricks, Tim Elston
In collaboration with Gregory Forest's research group |
Human
lung mucus
is a complex
polymer fluid which does not obey Newtonian dynamics. In this project,
we want to understand the diffusion of small bodies such as bacteria
and viruses through this mucus.
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