Signaling Dynamics in Single Cells
Head of the group
Secretariat
The regulation of proliferation and differentiation is a fundamental challenge for all multicellular organisms. The decision between alternative cell fates is therefore tightly controlled by external and internal signals. Through genetics, genomics and proteomics, many molecular players that process these signals have been identified, providing topological maps of the most prominent signaling networks. The next challenge we are facing now is to understand how these signaling networks act dynamically in living cells and how they intersect with each other to control the physiological response of a cell.
Individual cells within a population often react differently to the same signals, depending on their initial state. We therefore focus on the analysis of single cells and investigate the common properties that unite them and the sources of variation that make them different. We use automated time-lapse microscopy of living cells expressing fluorescent reporters to measure the dynamics of signaling networks with high temporal resolution. Since signaling networks contain complex, non-linear interactions that are difficult to understand intuitively, we combine the resulting quantitative data with mathematical modeling to gain a predictive understanding of cellular decisions processes.