NIGMS National Centers for Systems Biology (P50)

Letters of Intent Receipt Date(s): September 28, 2009 
Application Receipt Date(s): October 27, 2009

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) invites grant applications from institutions/ organizations proposing to establish Centers of Excellence in Systems Biology.  The goal of this initiative is to promote institutional development of pioneering research, research training, and outreach programs focused on systems-level inquiries of biomedical and biobehavioral questions within the NIGMS mission.  The description of the NIGMS mission can be found on the website, www.nigms.nih.gov.

Conceptual Challenges.  Systems biology is an interdisciplinary science that derives from biology, mathematics, computer science, physics, engineering, and other disciplines.  The infusion of theories and techniques from other fields and their integration is establishing new methodologies for problem definition, hypothesis generation and testing, and experimental approaches in biomedical science.  Most biological systems are too complex for even the most powerful computational models to capture all system properties.  A useful model, however, should conceptualize and formalize the system under study such that it becomes a powerful hypothesis generator.  To accomplish this, a certain level of abstraction may be required that focuses on the system properties of interest while neglecting some of the other details.