Systems biology and network analysis

Systems biology is the study of interrelationships between molecular constituents of a living cell through the integration of experimental and computational approaches. Most biological characteristics arise from complex interactions between the cell's functional elements; to understand how genes determine phe¬notypes, both in physiology and disease, it is necessary to adopt quantitative methods that allows a holistic approach. The course describes the principles useful to explore interactions by introducing methods for the analysis of gene-regulatory and large-scale networks exploiting availability of big functional genomics data sets. Analysis and modelling of genetic and epigenetic determinants of gene expression regulation will be considered.

At the end of the course, students will be able to apply systems biology techniques and pipelines to the analysis and characterization of regulatory (genetic and epigenetic) and interaction networks.