Systems biology is a cross-disciplinary approach to understand a specific disease using multiple diagnostic techniques and to identify therapeutic treatments.  The different types of biological information (tissues, cells, DNA, RNA, protein, protein interactions) also have their individual elements and the relationships of these with respect to one another must be determined and this information integrated to obtain an understanding of the system as a whole.  The cross-disciplinary faculty of biochemists, cell biologists, computer scientists, protein chemists, bioengineers, mathematicians, pharmacologists and physicians must use integrated teamwork to execute the hypothesis driven and integrative cycles of systems biology.

Here at the UC Davis Center for Tissue Regeneration and Repair we are currently using a systems biology approach to identify, understand and treat diseases such as osteoarthritis and prostate cancer in collaboration with physicians (orthopaedics, urology and pathology) at the UC Davis Medical Center, bioengineers, biochemists and cell biologists.   Biological information from normal and diseased tissue is used in tangent with information from the Human Genome Project (HGP) and current proteomics to identify gene targets, protein interactions or signal transduction pathways.

Molecular Biology

• Affymetrix genechip microarray
• TaqMan quantitative RTPCR
• Molecular cloning
• Bioinformatics

Protein Chemistry

• SDS PAGE
• ELISA
• Immunoblotting
• FPLC and HPLC
• Recombinant protein creation
• Cell and tissue culture
• Immunohistochemistry

Bioengineering

• Tissue mechanical testing
• Biomechanics
• Finite element analysis
• Image analysis

in vivo Models

• Surgical stabilization techniques
• Cartilage repair/augmentation
• Fracture union enhancement
• Patient therapeutic design