Cell decision-making is orchestrated by the complex interplay between intracellular dynamics and the extracellular environment. How do these components produce emergent phenotypes and affect cell decision-making? Can cell fate be directly engineered? Can mathematical models aid in the understanding the basis of living organism regulations and guide their re-engineering?
My multidisciplinary Systems and Synthetic Biology research group aims at answering these questions combining wet-lab experiments and computational research. The main aims are to:
i) get a quantitative understanding of the link between signalling pathway dynamics, cell-cycle and stem cell pluripotency. We combine tools from Systems and Synthetic Biology at population- and single-cell levels, and are currently setting-up a microscopy/microfluidics platform for real-time mammalian cells imaging and control;
ii) develop agent-based modelling tools for describing and predicting single-cell dynamics accounting for gene regulatory networks, cell morphology, cell growth and geometry of the environment;
iii) use in silico algorithms for rational minimal genome design, taking advantage of Whole-Cell models
