Cellular processes are determined by the concerted activity of thousands of genes, their products, and a variety of other molecules. This activity is coordinated by a complex network of biochemical interactions largely determined by molecular structures and physiochemical properties which control common intra and inter-cellular functions over a wide range of scales. At an increasing level of granularity, these may range from the formation/activation of transcriptional complexes, to the availability of a signaling pathway, all the way to complex, macroscopic cellular processes, such as cell adhesion.
Understanding this organization is crucial for the elucidation of biological function and for framing associated health related applications in a quantitative, molecular context. Additionally, the emerging complexity of these molecular interactions in the cell calls for a new level of sophistication in the design of genome-wide computational approaches. Many efforts have been recently aimed at mapping transcriptional, structural, signaling, metabolic, and drug interactions, among others. However, the field is still fragmented and a homogeneous framework for the comprehensive mapping and analysis of molecular cellular interactions, while still elusive, constitutes a highly relevant scientific goal.
Funded through the National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBC) program (a component of the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research) and hosted at the Columbia Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, the National Center for the Multiscale Analysis of Genomic and Cellular Networks (MAGNet) addresses this challenge through the application of both knowledge-based and physics-based methods. The Center provides an integrative computational framework to organize molecular interactions in the cell into manageable context dependent components. Furthermore, it develops a variety of interoperable computational models and tools that can leverage such a map of cellular interactions to elucidate important biological processes and to address a variety of biomedical applications.
