The Systems Biology Initiative

The Systems Biology Initiative was established in mid-2008 with foundation funding from the New South Wales Office for Science and Medical Research (OSMR) and the University of New South Wales. It is led by Professor Marc Wilkins.

Its mission is to do cutting-edge research in molecular systems biology, combining expertise in proteomics, next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics.

We have a special focus on understanding protein methylation, and have had a decade-long project to build and functionally study the complete methylproteome network of yeast. Within that, a focus has been to discover novel protein methyltransferases, and to understand the phospho-regulation of all histone methyltransferases and demethylases. A further focus has been to understand how protein methylation regulates protein-protein interactions, and we have been pioneering the use of crosslinking mass spectrometry in yeast for that purpose.

Our wet-lab team is funded by the Australian Research Council.

Our dry-lab team, who are involved in collaborative bioinformatics projects involving next-generation sequencing (genomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics), was funded by the NSW State Government RAAP Scheme over a 10 year period.

We are a member of MACSYS – the ARC Centre of Excellence in the Mathematical Analysis of Cellular Systems. This is a 7 year, $35M project.