ESF programme on ‘Integrated Approaches for Functional Genomics’ workshop on ‘Modelling of Molecular Networks’

The rapid pace of genome sequencing and new high-throughput methods are offering an unprecedented opportunity for investigating how individual genes and gene products cooperate to build up complex cellular structures and perform elaborate processes that enable cells and organisms to live and reproduce. The diagrams of cell regulatory networks that are being produced look increasingly complex, and it becomes impossible to use mere intuition to make predictions about their behaviour. Thus, the need for new integrative approaches is becoming paramount. These approaches range from systematic integration of large amounts of data, to efficient querying tools, to rigorous statistical analyses, and dynamic modelling. Such characterization of whole biological processes is becoming known as ‘systems biology’, and it will have a predictable impact on our knowledge of biological systems. At the ESF sponsored workshop ‘Modelling of Molecular Networks’, we had the opportunity to examine: (a) the quality and origin of available experimental data on the structure and assembly of molecular networks; (b) methodologies for the study of the structure and dynamics of these networks; and (c) ideas for extracting information on the organization and regulation of cellular systems, and for the identification of groups of genes/proteins that play a key role in the networks. Accordingly, the workshop was organized into three sessions: ‘Combining theoretical and experimental approaches for the description of the components and relations in molecular networks’; ‘Structures of molecular networks and computational methods for their simulation’; and ‘Assembling the puzzle’.