Systems Biology Project

Title Post-transcriptional feedback control of polyamine metabolism in yeast: an integrated modelling and experimental investigation

Principal Investigator Professor Declan Bates

Collaborators Dr Ian Stansfield (University of Aberdeen)

Summary Polyamines are small poly-cationic molecules found in all eukaryotes and bacteria. They perform an essential role in a number of core cellular processes, including protection of membranes from oxidation, and DNA transcriptional silencing. Their synthesis in the cell is subject to multiple and complex controls, most operating at the post-transcriptional level. This proposal will generate and validate a predictive mathematical model of the polyamine biosynthesis, and use that model to examine how robust polyamine pathway post-transcriptional control mechanisms are to perturbation, and how the biochemical 'engineering' of different elements of the polyamine control network contribute to the overall system behaviour in health and disease states.

Funding body BBSRC

Timescale 2008 to 2011