Harvard FAS Center for Systems Biology

Research at the FAS Center for Systems Biology combine a variety of experimental and theoretical approaches to find general principles that help to explain the structure, behavior and evolution of cells and organisms. Our scientists come from a wide range of disciplines, including biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and engineering. The FAS Center for Systems Biology houses our faculty, who have appointments in neighboring departments, the Bauer Fellows Program and Core Facilities. The Center is also home to the Center for Modular Biology, one of 10 NIGMS funded National Centers for Systems Biology. The NIGMS Center supports 15 interacting projects, led by Bauer fellows and faculty, with the goal to better understand how biological diversity is generated, exploited and controlled over a range of organisms, levels of complexity, and time scales: from the evolution of diversity in organisms to stochastic variability in single cells.

As part of a Harvard-wide initiative in systems biology the FAS Center works closely together with the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School; one major joint effort is the cross-school PhD program in Systems Biology.

Research Topics Currently Explored at the Harvard FAS Center:

• Logic of signaling and transcriptional networks
• Regulation and mechanism of circadian oscillators
• Self-organization of sub-cellular structures
• Decision making in single cells
• Yeast mating response
• Speciation
• Social interactions in microbes
• Physics of bacterial chromosome segregation
• Artificial cellular circuits
• Origin of Life: Emergence of self-replicating polymers
• Protein evolution and misfolding
• Permeability propoerties of biological hydrogels

Contact person for international exchange:

Bodo Stern, Director of Research Affairs

Ongoing international exchange:

[collaboration with Weizmann Institute, Naama Barkai group]

Relevant quantitative and systems biology degree programs

PhD Program in Systems Biology (joint program with the Harvard Medical School Department of Systems Biology)