U.S. government scientists have unveiled a project aimed at better understanding interactions between infectious organisms and human or animal cells.
Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases want to increase scientific knowledge concerning the complex biochemical networks that regulate such interactions. The Program in Systems Immunology and Infectious Disease Modeling will involve computational systems biology to focus on how pathogens cause disease and how the immune system responds to them.
The cornerstone of the project is said to be a software package called Simmune, which enables biologists to model many types of biological systems. Created by NIAID scientist Martin Meier-Schellersheim and colleagues, the software allows scientists to use a simple graphical interface to easily define the interactions between individual molecules in a large network, or the behaviors of cells in response to external signals.
Before Simmune, making such mathematical models by hand often took months and required extensive expertise in applied mathematics.
"Understanding the daunting complexity of biological systems is the greatest challenge and at the cutting-edge of science in the 21st century," said National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
Related stories:
Colonies in collapse: What's causing massive honeybee die-offs?
“To the bee, a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower, a bee is a messenger of love,” wrote poet Kahlil Gibran. Whether or not love is involved in the exchange, the evolutionary dance between pollen-transporting honey bees and nectar-producing flowers is one of nature’s most extraordinary symbiotic relationships, a hundred million years in the making.
Agricultural Chemicals Linked to Infections in a Declining Amphibian Species
(PhysOrg.com) -- Amphibians around the world are on the decline from disease. In an article in this week's issue of the journal Nature, Jason Rohr of the University of South Florida (USF) and colleagues revealed that chemical pollution can increase often deadly trematode (parasitic flatworm) infections in the northern leopard frog, a declining amphibian species.
What HIV needs: Identification of human factors may yield novel therapeutic targets for HIV
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Burnham Institute for Medical Research today announced 295 host cell factors that are involved in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The study, published in the Oct. 3 issue of
Cell, could lead to the development of a new class of HIV therapeutics aimed at disrupting the human-HIV interactions that lead to viral infection.
Higher HIV infection estimate shows need for routine screening, more funding for care
Arlington, VA—The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected soon to increase the estimate of new HIV infections in the United States by 40 percent. This highlights the need to make HIV testing a routine part of medical care and provide better funding to care for those who test positive, according to the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA).
Ugandan monkeys harbor evidence of infection with unknown poxvirus
Researchers report this month that red colobus monkeys in a park in western Uganda have been exposed to an unknown orthopoxvirus, a pathogen related to the viruses that cause smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox. Most of the monkeys screened harbor antibodies to a virus that is similar – but not identical – to known orthopoxviruses. The findings appear online in the journal
Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Researchers unveil landscape of human-pathogen protein interactions
Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech have provided the first global analysis of human proteins interacting with viral proteins and proteins in other pathogens.
An 'attractive' man-machine interface
Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have developed a new “nanobiotechnology” that enables magnetic control of events at the cellular level. They describe the technology, which could lead to finely-tuned but noninvasive treatments for disease, in the January issue of
Nature Nanotechnology (published online January 3).
Insect gut detects unhealthy meal
Plant leaves and surfaces are teeming with microbial life, yet the insects that feed on plants lack adaptive immune systems to fend off any intruding microorganisms they eat along with their greens. Now research published in the online open access journal,
BMC Biology shows how food-borne bacteria affect an insect’s immune system.