Systems Biology Laboratory (SYBILA)

Contact: doc. RNDr. David Šafránek, Ph.D.

Systems biology refers to multidisciplinary approaches designed to uncover emergent properties of complex biological systems. The aim of systems biology is to obtain a system-level understanding of such systems, by examining the structure and dynamics of cellular and organismal functions, rather than the characteristics of isolated parts of a cell or an organism.

Digital systems biology uses computational models together with the methodology of computer systems engineering supported by formal methods to study biological systems. It is an emerging field that dramatically enhances current analysis capabilities to increase our understanding of complex living systems. The technological impact of merging computer science and systems biology will be the design and implementation of digital biology laboratories capable of performing many more experiments than what is currently feasible in real labs and at lower cost (in terms both of human and financial resources) and in less time. These labs will allow biologists to design, execute, and analyze experiments to generate new hypotheses and develop novel high-throughput tools, resulting in advances in experimental design, documentation, and interpretation as well as a deeper integration between “wet” (lab-based) and “dry” research. Moreover, the digital biology laboratories will be a main vehicle for moving from single-gene diseases to multifactorial diseases, which account for more than 90% of the illnesses affecting our society.

Main research priorities

Our long-term research goal is to develop and apply computational science and technology to enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the behavior of living systems and develop scalable methods and tools for modeling and computerized analysis of large and complex living systems. The focus is on scalable methods and tools for modeling complex systems, parameter synthesis in biological models, digital bifurcation analysis. Our further goal is to develop a tool integration framework which is targeted towards modeling, simulation, visualisation, and analysis of complex biological systems. The framework will allow the instantiation of different tool chains supporting various process flows for which different tools and combination of tools are required.

Research team

The research is performed in the Systems Biology Laboratory (SYBILA). The web pages of the laboratory give more detailed and complete picture about our research related activities, including publications, seminars, research projects etc.

All research groups