VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent
Department Director: Dirk Inzé

ADDRESS

Science
Genomics has fundamentally altered the way in which we view plant biology. The pre-genomics reductionist view is being superseded by the emerging new ability to have a global view on cellular processes. The entire genome sequence of Arabidopsis and rice is now available, and for a number of other plant species (Poplar, Medicago, Lotus) such sequence will become available soon. In addition, large scale cDNA sequencing projects are rapidly documenting the expressed genes in many species including corn, wheat, soybean, Medicago, sugercane, banana, poplar, Physcomitrella and others. The big question to solve now is, “What is the function of all these genes?”. Functional genomics addresses this question at a large scale and advanced computational biology integrates data in networks that ultimately will allow us to understand the functioning of whole biological systems.
The biological systems studied in the department, such as cell cycle, lateral root development, cell death, lignification, bud dormancy, leaf development, plant-microbe interactions, a.o. are all highly complex and will benefit considerably from the integration in a systems biology approach. Biologists now have the tools at hand to view the global behaviour of their preferred model systems and to better select the genes that are likely to play key roles in the regulation of entire processes. Furthermore, new developments in the cloning of open reading frames, promoters and the making of constructs to perturb gene expression will considerably help to functionally analyse the genes of interest.
Systems biology requires the integration of three disciplines: bioinformatics and computational biology to model networks; functional genomics to develop and implement tools for the high-throughput analysis of biological systems; and last but not least biologists to ask the relevant questions and to develop the right material to answer them. These three disciplines need to go hand in hand in order to fulfil our mission to become a centre of excellence in systems biology.

Structure
The department is structured around the following group and project leaders and research themes: 

• Frank Van Breusegem: oxidative stress and cell death
• Wout Boerjan: bio-energy
• Lieven De Veylder & Dirk Inzé: cell cycle
• Mieke Van Lijsebettens: chromatin and growth control
• Tom Beeckman: root development
• Eugenia Russinova: brassinosteroids 
• Pierre Hilson: functional genomics
• Marnik Vuylsteke: quantitative genomics
• Geert De Jaeger: functional proteomics
• Yves Van de Peer: bioinformatics
• Alain Goossens: secondary metabolites
• Ann Depicker: gene regulation
• Marcelle Holsters & Sofie Goormachtig: plant-microbes
• Dirk Inzé: systems biology of yield
• Eva Benková: hormonal cross-talk in plant organogenesis
• Jiri Friml: auxin, polarity, patterning
• Sergei Kushnir: genome stability
• Karimi Mansour: vectors for cloned-based genomics
• Steven Maere: evolutionary systems biology
• Moritz Nowack: seed development

An introduction to their work can be found on the individual pages.

Click here (pdf - 341 Kb) for an interview with Dirk Inzé in the vib news (December 2003).

See also news item: Dirk Inzé receives the Francqui Prize for Biological and Medical Sciences 2005.

Press releases
See also press release (02/09/2008): BASF Plant Science and VIB boost cooperation.

Go to the  Department's own website for more details.

Departmental support
The members listed below are working on a departmental level providing general support . The team members within the individual Research Groups are listed on their specific pages.

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