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The Center for Modular Biology, based in the FAS Center for Systems Biology, is a multi-disciplinary, multi-investigator research program with two goals. First, we ask how well the idea of "functional modules" [1] — each module comprising a set of molecules that, together, do a job needed for survival and reproduction — helps us to understand the organization, behavior and evolution of cells and organisms. We also conduct an experiment in the organization of biological research, with the aim of building a truly collaborative group of scientists with a single guiding vision, and nucleating a larger community dedicated to looking for principles that explain biology. The center is one of nine funded by an NIGMS initiative in systems biology. The center’s research program comprises eight interacting projects, led by Bauer Fellows, and by faculty at Harvard and elsewhere. In these projects, we are analyzing and evolving modules, and the connections between them, identifying them computationally, studying how they allow long-term evolvability to coexist with short-term robustness, asking how they affect interactions among mutations in evolution, and examining the role of modules at multiple levels in the interplay between social behavior and gene expression. We ask how broadly the principles discovered by studying one module in one organism apply across the diversity of life, and thus help to define the fundamental principles that organize living systems. Our outreach, education and training efforts include co-organizing the Sixth International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB 2005), supporting students from outside biology to attend the MBL Physiology Course, high-school outtreach and support for undergraduates from underrepresented minority groups to participate in the FAS Center for System Biology’s summer undergraduate research internship program. The center’s principal investigator is Andrew Murray. 1. Hartwell, L. H., Hopfield, J. J., Leibler, S. & Murray, A. W. From molecular to modular cell biology. Nature 402, C47-C52 (1999). [Download PDF]
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