SPP 1395:  Information and Communication Theory in Molecular Biology

• Subject Area: Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Biology ; Chemistry ; Medicine
• Term: from 2010 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 73052397

During the middle of the 20th century, information theory and molecular genetics have gone through a great history of success: On one hand, the fundamental work of Shannon in 1948, which has giving rise to the modern information- and communication society we are living in. On the other hand, the discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA by Watson and Cricks in 1953, which was the beginning of contemporary genetics and its use in medicine. The information stored in the DNA, is transmitted, duplicated and changed (mutated). It further controls many processes in and in between cells. Interestingly, all these procedures can be described and analysed with models and methods of information theory.
We are convinced that information and communication theorists, together with biologists and medical scientists can contribute to a better understanding of processes in the cell concerning communication, even though there is good progress in research over the last years. In information theory and coding theory, transmission of information is viewed in an abstract way, so one can expect that independent of concrete realisations, the concepts, modules and results can be applied to molecular communication processes. Therefore, this Priority Programme focusses exclusively on assisting interdisciplinary projects in between information and communication scientists, on one hand, and biologists and medical scientists, on the other hand.
Modern biology, often referred to as the key science of the 21th century, is currently undergoing a transformation. The amount of new data demands the integration of the traditional biology with the other sciences. New theoretical concepts, modern methods of data analysis and mathematical models will play a strategical role in molecular biology and this can only be accomplished by intensive interdisciplinary collaboration. This Priority Programme intends to encourage and assist this collaboration.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes

Projects

• An Information Theoretic Approach to Stimulus Processing in the Olfactory System II (Applicants Mathar, Rudolf ;  Spehr, Marc )
• Application of Methods from Information Theory in Protein Interaction Analysis (Applicants Burkovski, Ph.D., Andreas ;  Huber, Johannes ;  Sticht, Heinrich )
• Combinatorial regulation of gene expression phases (Applicants Brunner, Michael ;  Herzel, Hanspeter )
• coordinations project (Applicant Bossert, Martin )
• Evolution of the AMP-activated protein kinase controlled gene regulatory network (Applicants Breunig, Karin D. ;  Große, Ivo )
• Finding new overlapping genes and their theory (Applicants Bossert, Martin ;  Keim, Daniel ;  Scherer, Siegfried )
• Identification of Causal Dependences in Gene Regulatory Networks using Algorithmic Information Theory (Applicants Janzing, Dominik ;  Lohmann, Jan )
• Identification of functionally important protein residues by means of entropy based methods, and experimental validation by mutational analysis (Applicants Merkl, Rainer ;  Sterner, Reinhard ;  Waack, Stephan )
• Improving the Reliability of RNA-seq: Approaching Single-Cell Transcriptomics to Explore Individuality in Bacteria (Applicants Bossert, Martin ;  Scherer, Siegfried )
• Information flow in a mammalian signal transduction pathway (Applicants Blüthgen, Nils ;  Loewer, Alexander )
• Information Transfer in the Mammalian Circadian Clock (Applicants Herzel, Hanspeter ;  Kramer, Achim )
• MiRNA and RNA-binding proteins as integral part of cell communication:context-based target prediction and validation (Applicants Backofen, Rolf ;  Palme, Klaus ;  Theis, Fabian )
• Mixed Models in Cell Communication and Cancer (Applicants Busch, Hauke ;  Börries, Melanie ;  Theis, Fabian )
• Molecular mechanism of information integration and decision making in Flowering timecontrol (Applicants Kollmann, Markus ;  Turck, Franziska )
• RNA Structures as Processing Signals and Sensors (Applicants Marchfelder, Anita ;  Schöning, Uwe )
• Semiotic Structures and Meaningful Information in Biological Systems (Applicants Diekmann, Stephan ;  Dittrich, Peter )
• The bacterial chemotaxis pathway - an optimal designed information processing network? (Applicants Kollmann, Markus ;  Sourjik, Victor )
• The DNA from a Coding Perspektive (Applicants Henkel, Werner ;  Muskhelishvili, Georgi )
• The Evolutive Adaptation of the Transcriptional Information Transmission in Escherichia coli (Applicants Sawodny, Oliver ;  Sprenger, Georg )
• Toward deciphering the phylotranscriptomic hourglass in plant embryogenesis (Applicants Große, Ivo ;  Quint, Marcel )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Martin Bossert