Team
Research Team 1
The research Team 1 will participate in the in silico study of cellular aging and contribute by offering solutions to the problem, from the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology perspective, with the use of novel computational intelligence tools. Also, the team will take part in the development of the local data repository of the project, in the evaluation of the computational analyses and in the development of bottom-up approaches for the dynamic study of individual signaling pathways. In the initial kernel of the Biosignal processing lab (Prof. A. Bezerianos, two post doc researchers and one Phd student), three new researchers (two Professors and one lecturer in the University of Patras) are added. Prof. I. Zarkadis will be responsible for the biological verification both of the results of his team (GRNs, PPIs and their interactions) as well as of the ResT2. Prof. K. Sgarbas will be responsible for the design and development of the local database according to world standards, and for the boosting and optimization of the computational intelligence algorithms. The lecturer G. Kalosakas will be responsible for the validation of the derived kinetic models with biophysical methods. Finally, the contribution of the external collaborators Dr. I. Maraziotis, Dr. P. Bougioukos, F. Papathanasopoulos, MSc, K. Dimitrakopoulou, PhD Candidate, Aris Vrahatis, PhD Candidate and George Dimitrakopoulos, PhD Candidate will be significant for the successful implementation of the project.
Research Team 2
Research Team 2 constitutes a highly complementary and interdisciplinary group, coupling experimental wet lab and in silico expertise in the aging field highly qualified in conducting the necessary mathematical and computational analysis of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics data. Dr. Α. Chatziioannou is an expert in bio-computational analysis of DNA micro-arrays through in-house software that reveals interacting molecular pathways in gene profiling experiments and creates simulation models of biochemical networks. Dr. Ν. Chondrogianni is an experimental biologist, interested in factors regulating human aging. She will contribute the experimental platform of the project, namely the cellular model of replicative and stress-induced premature senescence and she will validate the extracted in silico results derived by the other members. Prof. T. Bountis is an expert in fractal geometry and Chaos Theory, and the dynamic study of high dimensional data of non-linear time-series and highly complex spatial structures. His contribution will target the interpretation of the evolutionary complexity of cellular aging. Prof. N. Chronis is an expert in the experimental study of C. elegans and will contribute in the development of the C. elegans experiments for aging and the validation of the derived results in this model organism.
Research Team 3
The Research Team 3 is complementary both in its internal composition and compared with other groups within the project. The main objective of the group is conducting phospho-proteomics experiments with samples from aging cell culture (Research Team 2) and analysis as well as contribution in consortium data analysis and validation of aging models. The lecturer, Dr. L. Alexopoulos led the group has developed the methodology during his career at MIT, Harvard and Pfizer pharmaceuticals and brought the technology to NTUA from the mid-2008. Within a year has created a laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment and has entered into partnerships with academic centers (Max Planck Institute, Aachen University, MIT) and pharmaceutical companies (Vertex pharmaceutical, Boehringer Ingelheim) interested in how to implement phosphoproteomic experiments and subsequent analysis related to pathway construction, identification of drug effects and prediction of clinical efficacy (REF1,2,3). The assistant professor P. Kollia, Department of Biology University of Athens, completes the team providing significant assistance to cover a wide range of experiments in molecular biology including: i) phosphoproteomic and proteomic experiments via standard experimental techniques (ELISA, western blot, protein arrays), ii) gene expression studies (Affymetrix, Illumina, PCR), ,iii) providing state of the art experimental facilities, iv) tissue and cell culture techniques and histological/immunohistological analysis.