> The most common view of signal transduction starts
> with extracellular ligands that activate some
> signaling cascades within the target cells, aiming
> at
> the regulation of certain target molecules.
> Depending
> on the nature of these molecules, metabolic, gene
> expression or structural events are triggered by the
> incoming signal.
>
> One important aim of these signals is in general to
> adapt the genetic program of the cell to its new
> tasks. The first step of gene regulation,
> transcription, is therefore a highly regulated
> process. Although a lot of information about this
> step
> is already available, we largely depend on reliable
> predictions of gene regulatory events to achieve a
> full integration of gene regulation with signal
> transduction processes.
>
> In the seminar, it will be discussed how we can make
> use of existing information resources like TRANSFAC
> and TRANSPATH, our databases on transcription and
> signal transduction, to develop an integrative model
> for regulatory networks, and how we can use their
> contents as a basis for predictions that are needed
> to
> bridge the large gaps of incomplete knowledge in
> this
> field.