Dynamic Biochemical Network Analysis for the
Discovery of Disease Biomarkers

Speaker:
Dr Kumar Selvarajoo
Project Leader, Systems Biology
Bioinformatics Institute Singapore (BII)

Venue: LT11
Date: 8 April 2005, Friday
Time: 3.00 - 4.00 pm

Abstract:
The early part of this century has witnessed numerous studies revealing cellular systems being robust to perturbation. That is, they function properly even under diverse physiological conditions. This suggests nature has inherent built-in redundancy and may be designed in a scale-free manner. Uncovering the properties of cellular interactions and regulations will surely aid in the understanding of the design principles of life. Static interaction maps, such as metabolic pathway charts, alone are insufficient to shed light as we already know the efficiency and availability of cellular connections changes with external conditions. It is thus important to identify systemically the topological evolutions of cellular network under a specified perturbation. We have devised a novel quantitative computational approach that systemically detects the evolution of biological networks by analyzing the relevant phenotypic response to external perturbations. To test the methodology on problems that have known solution, we performed theoretical comparisons using mass action kinetics. To test the applicability of this methodology on real biological system, we simulated the phenotypes of yeast glycolytic metabolites. We found that our approach successfully detects commonly found network motifs with high accuracy in the theoretical analysis. For the yeast studies, our simulations suggest a novel step that becomes highly modulated (the rate-limiting step). The discovery of such novel steps could pave way for systemic identification of drug targets for a biological network that may be critical in disease formation and treatment.

Biodata of Speaker:
Kumar Selvarajoo obtained his Master of Engineering degree in Aeronautics from the Imperial College of London in 1997. Thereafter, he worked in industries for a few years before embarking
a joint PhD project with the Nanyang Technological University and the National Cancer Centre under the supervision of Prof Lim Mong King and Dr Patrick Tan, in the research area of biological network analysis in the year 2000. During his PhD, he has made several notable successes. In 2002, Biotech Research Ventures made an international patent application on his work, which lead to the formation of a spin-off company, Systome Therapeutics. There he was appointed as the Director of Technology. After completing his PhD, he joined the Biomarkers Group, bioinformatics Institute (BII) as a project leader where he continues to develop his computational methodology in the hope to understand the ‘basis of life’.