QBiC belongs to the Kobe campus, along with other centers focusing on various areas of biology and drug design. It is headed by Toshio Yanagida, and is composed of three cores (15PIs) dealing with different aspects of quantitative biology: cell dynamics, computational biology and cell design.
The new center was set up with the aim to contribute to systems science on cells, using “whole cell modeling” as its principal method. Scientists will work on the crucial task of trying to understand how cells, with their extraordinary number of interrelated components that could easily fall into a state of combinatorial explosion, are able to respond to external stimulus in such a tightly controlled way using minimal energy. The aim of QBiC is to develop innovative measuring, analysis, and modeling technologies and techniques to recreate the dynamics of this hyper-complex biological system —the cell—and to approach the dynamism of cell systems through a fusion of these techniques.
The development of whole cell modeling will bring us closer to the ability to predict various cellular phenomena and to freely manipulate cells and the groups they form. Cell system manipulation has the potential to become a significant technology of the 21st century, similar in importance to genetic manipulation, which drove the development of life sciences in the 20th century. This technology is expected to make major contributions to innovations in areas such as regenerative medicine and patient diagnostics.
