Rajat Kumar De
Indian Statistical Institute, India
Title: Modeling ER stress and associated disorders on the onset of obesity
Biography
Biography: Rajat Kumar De
Abstract
Obesity is an epidemic of the 21st century. It continues to expand in western countries and paradoxically even in the countries where poverty and malnutrition are major problems. No age group is exempted from obesity due to different reasons, i.e., diet, life style and genetic component among others. In this talk we describe how a computational model can be formulated to understand the mechanism of the development of ER stress and associated disorders on the onset of obesity. For this purpose, we collected extensively ER and ER stress related pathways information to construct a set of global pathways by including other related pathways, like apoptosis, diabetes, inflammation, protein degradation and obesity. With all these pathway database and literature, we design an integrated pathway, through mining strategies, to form a biochemical pathway related to ER stress and obesity. We find out the control points regulating the activity (i.e., ON or OFF through feedback inhibition) of the integrated pathway. We also find out the genes coding for the enzymes catalyzing the reactions in the pathway. The talk will also describe design of a database containing all this information. The pathways in the database will then be subjected to network analysis. We use flux balance analysis, control theory and machine learning methodology to develop the model of the pathway as well as to analyze the pathways/networks. The properties of the pathways/networks are very important from therapeutic point of view, as in simple terms, they have the power to control the whole system.