Introduction
In Dresden, there is a strong interest in the basis of cell and tissue morphogenesis during development. Substantial investments have been made in systematic genome-wide experimental approaches to identify and modulate genes involved in these processes, as well as novel imaging and single-molecule techniques that can be used to study molecules and their interactions in living cells with unprecedented spatial resolution. There is a consensus that the understanding of biological phenomena requires (i) more rigorous quantitative measurements, and (ii) the combination of experiment with theory through input from the physical sciences and mathematics. The theoretical analysis of complex systems is an active area in physics, mathematics, informatics and engineering. This area has been given a boost by recent development in biology, especially in imaging and genomics. Because cellular processes represent non-equilibrium phenomena that are without precedent in the non-biological world, new physical ideas and concepts are emerging from the theoretical study of these systems. Of particular interest to engineers and mathematicians is the elucidation of the design principles in biological systems.
Although the primary advances in Systems Biology to date have been in bacterial systems, we believe that the greatest challenges for the future are in eukaryotic systems. This is because the larger size and greater spatio-temporal complexity of eukaryotic cells over bacteria raises additional interesting questions about self-organization, compartmentalization and robustness against fluctuations and variations. Furthermore, eukaryotic systems pose a larger number of open questions that are of greater relevance to modern biology and medicine.
The groups in Dresden represent a mix of those interested primarily in theory and modeling, as well as groups interested in creating large scale data sets through functional genomics techniques.
