Evolutionary Systems & Synthetic Biology
Why biological networks are built the way they are, and how to use the design principles evolution discovers to design new ones.
Which network structures can produce a given behavior, and how readily does evolution find them? We study how evolution shapes cellular networks under biophysical and biochemical constraints, and which design principles it discovers along the way. Our main tool is BioJazz, a framework for the in silico evolution of cellular networks with unbounded complexity using rule-based modeling, combined with mathematical analysis of the resulting networks.
Selected work:
- BioJazz: in silico evolution of cellular networks with unbounded complexity using rule-based modeling (Nucleic Acids Research, 2015).
- In silico evolution of signaling networks with bistable response dynamics (Methods Mol. Biol., 2019).
- A core signaling motif that displays multistability through multi-state enzymes (J. R. Soc. Interface, 2016).
- Enzyme sequestration as a tuning point for the response dynamics of signaling networks (PLoS Comput. Biol., 2016).
Understanding the principles evolution has found lets us use them to design biological systems beyond what evolution has explored.
TODO (Song): add current projects, collaborators, and funding.
People
- Song Feng — Assistant Professor & Principal Investigator