Next week the CRI will host two special guests, Ron Milo (Weizmann Institute) and Drew Andy (Stanford University). To this occasion, we have invited each of them to animate an informal evening with the CRI students and mentors.
Wednesday March 23rd, 18:00: Ron Milo
Friday March 25th, 18:00: Drew Andy
Both sessions will follow with wine, cheese etc and open discussion.
Some background on our first guest Ron Milo (Weizmann Institute)
Ron Milo/Research topics:
1. Plant and environmental systems biology
The lab aims to harness the tools and approaches employed in systems biology to bear on the grand challenges of sustainability. We study the efficiency of photosynthesis, trying to gain insight about the constraints that shape its properties and the limitations on the maximal productivity in plants and other photosynthetic organisms.
2. Optimality in Carbon Metabolism
Carbon metabolism uses a complex series of enzymatic steps to fix carbon dioxide into sugars and then convert them into metabolic precursors. Can we gain insight into the constraints that shape evolution's solution to this task? We use a novel computational approach to generate all possible paths between every two metabolites. We find that central metabolism is built as a minimal walk between the twelve precursor metabolites that form the basis for biomass. The approach is applied to design new carbon fixation pathways which are potential alternatives to the Calvin-Benson cycle.
3. BioNumbers database
This is a collaborative effort to establish a database of useful biological numbers such as the number of ribosomes in the cell, the volume of the nucleus, the rate of translation and transcription and many many other useful but too often hard to find biological numbers. You can learn more about it and check out the current version at the BioNumbers database.
4. Optimality models in biology
A methodology that helps us test our understand of biological systems. Here is a compilation of annotated examples I am compiling - Optimality in biology collection.
5. Methodologies in the Science of Sustainability
In this research we aim to thoroughly understand human ecological footprint and find new approaches and indicators that will help mitigate it. There is growing evidence that our dietary and consumption habits exert substantial pressure on Nature and its resources. We are developing a systems biology inspired approach to find metrics for measuring the true natural costs of consumption in terms of natural resources - (ECOST); we are in the advanced stages of launching GeoNumbers, a database of useful ecological and planetary science numbers, that will enable a better quantitative understanding of human impact on Nature.
Ron Milo/Publications
In the oven
* A. Bar-Even, E. Noor, A. Flamholz, J. Buescherb, R. Milo, Hydrophobicity and charge account for over a third of the variation in metabolite concentrations
On the ice
* A. Bar-Even, E. Noor, D. Davidi, Y. Savir, D. Tawfik, R. Milo, The moderately proficient enzyme: evolutionary and physiochemical trends shaping enzyme parameters
Recently served
* E. Noor, E. Eden, R. Milo, U. Alon, Central Metabolism as a Minimal Biochemical Walk between Precursors for Biomass and Energy, Molecular Cell 2010. pdf
* U. Moran, R. Phillips, R. Milo, Snapshot - Key Numbers in Biology, Cell 2010.
* A. Bar-Even, E. Noor, N. Lewis, R. Milo, Design and Analysis of Synthetic Carbon Fixation Pathways, PNAS 2010.
* Alperovitch*, A., Sharon*, I., Rohwer, F., Aro, E.M., Milo, R., Nelson, N., and Béjà, O. Reconstructing a puzzle: Existence of cyanophages containing both photosystem-I & photosystem-II gene-suites inferred from oceanic metagenomic datasets. Environ. Microbiol. 2010
* Y. Savir, E. Noor, R. Milo, T. Tlusty, Cross-species analysis traces the adaptation of Rubisco towards optimality in a low-dimensional landscape, PNAS 2010.
* R. Milo, P. Jorgensen, M. Springer, G. Weber, BioNumbers - the database of key numbers in molecular and cell biology, Nuncleic Acids Research 2010.
* R. Phillips and R. Milo, A feeling for the numbers in biology, PNAS 2009.
* R. Milo, M. Schuldiner, Weizmann young PI forum: the power of peer-support, Molecular Cell 2009.
* R. Milo, What governs the reaction center excitation wavelength of photosystems I and II?, Photosynthesis Research 2009.
Old time favorites
* R. Milo, J. Hou, M. Springer, M. Brenner and M. Kirschner, The relationship between evolutionary and physiological variation in hemoglobin. PNAS 2007.
* A. Sigal*, R. Milo*, A. Cohen*, N. Geva-Zatorsky, Y. Klein, Y. Liron, N. Rosenfeld, T. Danon, N. Pertzov and U. Alon Variability and memory of protein levels in human cells. Nature 2006.
* R. Milo, S. Itzkovitz, N. Kashtan, R. Levitt, S. Shen-Orr, I. Ayzenshtat, M. Sheffer & U. Alon. Superfamilies of designed and evolved networks. Science 2004.
* R. Milo, S. Shen-Orr, S. Itzkovitz, N. Kashtan, D. Chklovskii & U. Alon,
Network Motifs: Simple Building Blocks of Complex Networks. Science 2002.