Group

The Computational Biology Group is part of the Department of Biosystems, Science and Engineering of ETH Zurich.

From Networks to Function: Computational Models of Development

The Computational Biology Group (CoBi) develops computational models of developmental processes. A particular focus lies on mechanistic 4D image-based in silico models of organogenesis (mouse lung, kidney, pancreas, limb, brain, Drosophila wing and eye) and on the delineation of fundamental mechanism such as those that restrict the size of organs and that maintain the proportions of structures in differently sized embryos. The group maintains collaborations with tissue engineers to build spatially organized tissue from stem cells and with clinicians to apply our techniques to disease models.

The group started out as a purely computational group and all data was obtained via collaborations with experimental groups. In April 2015, a wet lab was started under the lead of Dr Odysse Michos. The wet lab focuses on mouse lung and kidney development and combines organ cultures with high-end imaging (widefield, confocal, optical projection tomography (OPT), lightsheet microscopy) to generate imaging data (and hypotheses) for the computational modeling and to test model predictions in experiments. Collaborations with experimental groups are continued to obtain data also for other developmental systems.

The group employs and adapts existing software packages for data processing and simulations, but also develops methods and tools for image-based modeling, the analysis of RNASeq data, and tissue simulations where needed.