National Centers of Systems Biology

New Mexico Center for the Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling

Principal Investigator: Janet M. Oliver, PhD (UNM School of Medicine and Cancer Center)

Other key investigators:
Bridget Wilson, Diane Lidke, Elaine Bearer, Jeremy Edwards, Melanie Moses (UNM Schools of Medicine and Engineering)
Stanly Steinberg, Keith Lidke (UNM College of Arts and Sciences)
Bill Hlavacek, Byron Goldstein, Andrew Bradbury, Yi Jiang (LANL)
Anup Singh, Conrad James, Jeri Timlin (SNL)

Website: http://stmc.health.unm.edu

The New Mexico Center for Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling (Spatiotemporal Modeling Center; STMC) is one of ten National Centers for Systems Biology funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). A Center-without-walls, the STMC biologists are located in the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and Cancer Center, while its physical and computational scientists and engineers are in the UNM School of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences, at the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories (LANL, SNL) and at collaborating sites.

The STMC’s scientific goal is to determine how the spatial proximity, dynamics, interactions and biochemical modifications of membrane receptors and signaling proteins together determine the outcome of complex, interacting cell signaling networks important in immune function and in cancer. The STMC experimental team is equipped to image and measure the distributions, mobility, interactions and phosphorylation/dephosphorylation of receptors and signaling proteins and lipids that occur during signaling and crosstalk through tyrosine-kinase-coupled and G protein-coupled receptors. Membrane-proximal events are being linked in time and space to Ca2+ mobilization and to Ca2+-dependent cellular responses. The STMC technology team is improving the measurement tools through developments in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and image analysis, in the creation of novel fluorescent single chain Abs, and in the engineering of microfluidic platforms for cell activation and biochemical analysis. The STMC computational modeling team is extending sophisticated rules-based modeling approaches pioneered at LANL to describe biochemical cascades and newer stochastic spatial approaches developed at UNM to evaluate spatial aspects of receptor signaling, including clustering, diffusion and other dynamic membrane-proximal processes; team members are integrating these different approaches in hybrid models. Experimentalists and modelers work together closely to test model predictions and to refine the models.

The New Mexico STMC intends to maximize the ability of its members to conduct innovative science; to prepare new members for successful research careers focused on quantitative, systems level analyses of complex biomedical processes; and to lead the advancement of women and minorities within the developing discipline of systems biology. The international community of systems biologists is strongly welcomed to interact with us at q-bio (cnls.lanl.gov/q-bio), the annual international systems biology summer school at Los Alamos and conference in Santa Fe, NM.