Virtual cells - Decoding life's basic units

Cells are the basic units of life. For over a century,
understanding cellular processes has been the basis for
understanding human development and disease, and for deciphering
the actions of novel disease treatments. But there’s a caveat:
wet-lab studies in cells take time and money, they are often
reductionist. To overcome those challenges of the wet lab,
researchers have for some time tried to model cellular processes
mathematically, in so-called virtual cells. With the availability
of large-scale datasets and sophisticated AI models, virtual cells
are advancing into useful tools for researchers. In episode 41 of
the BioRevolution podcast we spoke to Prof. Fabian Theis, Chair of
Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems at TU Munich and
director of the Institute of Computational Biology at the Helmholtz
Zentrum München. With Fabian we discussed the convergence of
mathematics and biology into virtual cell models and their
potential use cases in basic research and drug development. You can
find more on Fabian's research here: Theis Lab:
https://www.helmholtz-munich.de/en/icb/research-groups/theis-lab
Disclaimer: Louise von Stechow & Andreas Horchler and their
guests express their personal opinions, which are founded on
research on the respective topics, but do not claim to give
medical, investment or even life advice in the podcast. Learn more
about the future of biotech in our podcasts and keynotes. Contact
us here: scientific communication: https://science-tales.com/
Podcasts: https://www.podcon.de/ Keynotes:
https://www.zukunftsinstitut.de/louise-von-stechow Image Aden Lao
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