Applied Systems Biology Core

The primary goal of the Applied Systems Biology Core (ASBC) is to provide a platform for integrative data mining of comprehensive renal disease gene expression data sets. The ASCB serves as a bridge to connect the fundamental biological and clinical knowledge of the domain experts with the relevant segments in the genome wide data sets.

The main objective of the ASBC is to empower the renal community to apply systems biology to:

  1. Understand kidney development and injury in global molecular terms.
  2. Identify critical pathways that have potential as therapeutic targets.
  3. Define molecular markers of diagnosis and progression.
  4. Define patient populations for focused clinical trials.
  5. Develop innovative kidney disease management strategies tailored to individual patients ("personalized medicine").

ASBC assists the center investigators in integrating the rich expression data sets in their focused, hypothesis driven research to ensure maximal utilization of the data generated. ASBC have employed a data analysis pipeline for the generation of expression maps of human and murine kidney diseases.

This data analysis pipeline can be easily extended by integrating the exploratory tools developed at the core in the framework of the NCIBI/CCMB at UM . These tools are compiled in a web-based sakai portal system. The portal system not only provides a suite of data analysis tools, but also serves as an effective communication platform. The portal structure proves essential for the online assistance that can be acquired through diverse available links such as project specific documents, logfiles, chat rooms, mail archives and wikis. To serve the renal research community ,Kretzler Laboratory in collaboration with Compendia Bioscience have developed a fully automated web-based research platform,Nephromine, which provides researchers with a rich set of publicly available renal gene expression data, packaged with the tools and interface necessary to analyze it, all aimed at advancing a molecular understanding of kidney disease and improving clinical outcomes.

ASBC collaboration portal (password restricted)