$11.4 million grant launches new Center for Collective Cell Decisions
James Ferrell, MD, PhD
BY MOLLY SHARLACH
OCT. 29, 2013
A new center at Stanford will bring together a diverse group of faculty with a common goal: to understand the collective behaviors of interacting cells.
The Center for Collective Cell Decisions has been established with a five-year, $11.4-million grant from the National Centers for Systems Biology, part of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
"Cells do everything in the context of what other cells around them are doing," said center co-director James Ferrell, MD, PhD, professor of chemical and systems biology and of biochemistry. "We want to figure out the basic rules and logic of these collective decisions."
Systems biology emerged more than a decade ago as biologists realized that studying a single cell, gene or protein in isolation was inadequate to describe the complexity of a biological system. In addition to chemistry and biology, the field draws on mathematics and computer science to understand the circuitry of interacting cells and molecules.
Several faculty members are already addressing these questions with their research, but the new center will build stronger connections among them through journal clubs, seminars and annual retreats. Tobias Meyer, PhD, the other co-director and a professor of chemical and systems biology, said the new center will "help students and postdocs learn how to do systems biology more quickly by better connecting with colleagues who do similar work."
The center will focus on deciphering the regulation of three fundamental yet complex cellular processes: division, migration and differentiation, with applications to cancer biology, cell biology and developmental biology, respectively. Cell migration, for example, is vital to the process of healing a wound, as cells must move in a coordinated fashion to properly fill the gap with new tissue.
To control these synchronized activities, groups of cells may employ feedback loops and signaling pathways similar to individual cells. Alternatively, cells may "draw on a different set of 'social skills' to tune their behaviors within the context of a collective multicellular tissue," Ferrell said.
Established in 2003, the National Centers for Systems Biology program funds 15 other centers "focused on molecular and cellular biology, genetics, pharmacology and physiology."
Molly Sharlach is a science-writing intern in the medical school's Office of Communication & Public Affairs.