Technical Summary

We use Systems Biology approaches to study metabolism in order to understand how the metabolic network is regulated by different genetic or environmental conditions. We construct metabolic models and by combining different levels of ‘-Omics’ datasets we examine:

1) How metabolic system constantly adapts to match nutrition, growth rate, and stress situations

2) How single cell organisms within a community cooperate each other for their survival.

3) What are common universal topological, functional and evolutionary features of metabolic networks in general?

Selected publications:

1) Alam MT, M-V. Olin-Sandoval, Keller MA, Zelezniak A, Luisi BF, Ralser M: The self-inhibitory nature of metabolic networks and its alleviation through compartmentalization. Nature communications (2017), 8:6018.

2) Mülleder M, Calvani E, Alam MT, Wang RK, Eckerstorfer F, Zelezniak A, Ralser M: Functional Metabolomics Describes the Yeast Biosynthetic Regulome. Cell (2016), 167, 1–13.

3) Alam MT*, Zelezniak A*, Mülleder M*, Shliaha P, Schwarz R, Capuano F, Vowinckel J, Radmanesfahar E, Krueger A, Calvani E, Michel S, Börno S, Christen S, Patil KR, Timmermann B, Lilley KS, Ralser M: The metabolic background is a global player in Saccharomyces gene expression epistasis. Nature Microbiology (2016), Article number:15030. * equal contribution.

4) Alam MT, Merlo ME, The STREAM consortium, Hodgson DA, Wellington EMH, Takano E, Breitling R: Metabolic modelling and analysis of the metabolic switch in Streptomyces coelicolor. BMC Genomics (2010), 11:202.

5) Alam MT, Merlo ME, Takano E, Breitling R: Genome-based phylogenetic analysis of Streptomyces and its relatives. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. (2010), 54:763–772. Faculty of 1000 Biology “Must read” paper.