ABOUT RECESS
The DFG funded International Research Training School (IRTG) RECESS brings together researchers from two Munich universities (LMU and TUM) and Moscow State University.
The central theme of the research program, the regulation and evolution of cellular systems, serves to unite research groups from several disciplines (including bioinformatics, computer science, proteomics, bioengineering, biology, and biochemistry) and promote collaboration between theoreticians and experimentalists to model and understand similarities and differences in the logic and quantitative behaviour of regulatory networks among species based on high-throughput expression data.
The central research question is addressed with a major focus of phosphoproteomics data shared among the individual projects via a workflow scheme implementing our approach. Within this framework, there are three main research topics: 1) Comparative genomics of metabolic and regulatory systems, 2) Network-based interpretation of transcriptome and proteome data, and 3) Posttranscriptional regulation mechanisms.
Research labs with expertise and international reputation in the above areas are present at the three participating universities. The proposed research training program will encourage the exchange of knowledge and personnel among these labs, producing a synergistic effect that will allow for much greater progress to be made in very complex, emerging fields such as systems biology.
At the center of the IRTG is a graduate program with the aim of educating PhD students in all fields necessary for understanding complex biological systems. This program will build upon the highly successful bachelor/master/diploma programs in bioinformatics that have been offered in Munich since 2000 and in Moscow since 2002.
The advantage of the proposed PhD program is that it forms a network of graduate students addressing a common set of problems with a diverse array of interdisciplinary tools. This is ensured within the central research focus via the implementation and the innovative concept of the IRTG enabling and requiring both competitive individual PhD research projects as well as cooperation via sharing of data and models. Students will receive both theoretical and experimental training and will have the opportunity to learn specialized skills from participating labs at all three universities. Thus, their training will go well beyond of what is normally provided within a single academic faculty, department, or group. The output will be a new generation of scientists who are able to explore the vast amounts of genetic, genomic, and proteomic data that are being produced and integrate them into a new understanding of how cellular processes are regulated.
