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Our group focuses on the development and verification of mathematical models for cellular behavior from an initial stimulus to the final phenotype.
In a systems biology approach we combine experimental research on cell-cell communication with the development of appropriate multi-scale dynamic models to investigate the necessary and sufficient control points that lead to cell proliferation, differentiation, migration or death.
We adapt concepts from non-linear dynamics and complex systems to develop appropriate dynamic models unraveling self-organizing properties in cellular behavior. Such behavior in a multicellular environment is most likely the results of time-sequential events, involving protein signaling and gene regulation in feedback-entangled processes lasting several hours.
In the context of wound healing we investigate how keratinocytes from the epidermis decide to migrate or proliferate in spatio-temporal gradients of cytokines patterns.
The results of our modeling will be combined with a rule based modeling for wound closure that is developed in the Grabe group.