Having computational and bioinformatics expertise in a biology lab is a key requirement.
A computational biology expertise cluster is devoted to processing and extracting new biological knowledge through ‘in silico’ analysis of the immense amount of data produced daily by the lab.
Members of this cluster work on developing a ‘toolbox’ for processing metabolomics data including methods for enhancing the capability of metabolite identification (link to WEIZAMASS).
Other cluster members work on the difficult task of integrating information derived from multi- ‘omics’ experiments including transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and small-RNA profiling (Link to Computational Biology).
In addition, we have been constructing models of plant metabolic networks and currently continue with generating such models for specific plant organs and tissues to unravel the metabolic cross talk between plant parts. The metabolic modelling approach is further coupled to the analysis of ‘metabolic flux’ which provides quantitative information regarding the flow of intermediates in the metabolic network.