Dr. Gabor Balazsi

Regular Member

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Department of Systems Biology

Research Interests:

• Mathematical/computational modeling and experimental characterization of biomolecular interaction networks
• Molecular mechanisms underlying cellular defense, cell population survival and evolution in stress conditions

Project #1. We study by experiment and computational modeling the combined effect of network structure on stochastic gene expression and cell population fitness.  Our earlier studies proved that gene expression noise can aid survival after a single exposure to stress.  The current project aims to test the effect of feedback regulation on the emergence of non-genetic drug resistance, and the evolution of genetic drug resistance.

Project #2. We are designing synthetic gene constructs to accurately control various aspects of gene expression within a cell population.  For example, we can now independently adjust the mean and noise (Coefficient of Variation) of a target gene in yeast.  We have also built a "linearizer" gene circuit that converts a nonlinear (sigmoidal) dose response to linear.

Project #3. We study the response of large-scale gene regulatory networks of infectious bacteria and cancer cells to various factors using microarray data. We identify distinct sets of transcriptional subnetworks that are characteristic to bacterial persistence or clinical cancer subtypes. These results will open the door for a systems-level identification of driver networks responsible for various cellular phenotypes.

Selected Publications:

Nevozhay D, Adams RM, Van Itallie E, Bennett MR, Balázsi G (2012) Mapping the environmental fitness landscape of a synthetic gene circuit.  PLoS. Comput. Biol. 8(4)e1002480.

Dutta B, Pusztai L, Qi Y, Andre F, Lazar V, Bianchini G, Ueno N, Agarwal R, Wang B, Shiang CY, Hortobagyi GN, Mills GB, Symmans WF, Balázsi G (2012) A network-based, integrative study to identify core biological pathways that drive breast cancer clinical subtypes.  Br J Cancer 106(6):1107-16.

Balázsi G, van Oudenaarden A, Collins JJ (2011) Cellular decision making and biological noise: from microbes to mammals.  Cell 144(6):910-25.

Nevozhay D, Adams R, Murphy K, Josic K, Balázsi G (2009). Negative autoregulation linearizes the dose response and suppresses the heterogeneity of gene expression. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., USA. 106(13), 5123-5128.

Balázsi G, Heath A, Shi L, Gennaro ML (2008). The temporal response of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis gene regulatory network during growth arrest. Mol. Systems Biol. 4:22.

Blake WJ, Balázsi G, Kohanski MA, Isaacs FJ, Murphy KF, Kuang Y, Cantor CR, Walt DR, Collins JJ (2006) Phenotypic consequences of promoter-mediated transcriptional noise. Mol Cell 24:853-865.

Balázsi G, Barabási AL, Oltvai ZN (2005) Topological units of environmental signal processing in the transcriptional regulatory network of Escherichia coli. Proc Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 102:7841-7846.

Additional Publications

Program Affiliation:

Program in Genes and Development