VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology

Science director Dirk Inzé

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 The pre-genomics reductionist view is being superseded by the emerging new ability to have a global view on cellular processes.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 center, 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 center of excellence in systems biology.

Dirk Inzé explains his strategy

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