Andre Levchenko
Assistant Professor, Signal Transduction and Cell-Cell Communication Lab, The Whitaker Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Address:
3400 N. Charles Street
Clark Hall, Room 208 C
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: (410) 516-5584
Fax: (410)
E-mail: alev@bme.jhu.edu
CV
Research Interest Statement
Living cells exhibit unprecedented ability to persist and function in unpredictable, noisy and often hostile environments. Signal transduction mechanisms developed over eons of evolution allow them to successfully detect the changes in the environment, process the information and harness the power of other networks, e.g., metabolic, genomic and cytoskeleton to respond to these changes appropriately. Failure to so results in a whole range of diseases, including cancer, neurological disorders and developmental abnormalities. The Signal Transduction and Cell-Cell Communication Lab is involved in detailed, iterative computational and experimental analysis of cell signaling in diverse settings and organisms. The computational problems are aimed at understanding the signaling events on multiple scales, from molecular to tissue levels. In particular we are interested in cell signaling in gradients of chemoattractants and chemorepellents, autocrine signaling in normal and cancerous tissues and signaling in stem cell development. We are also looking into interactions between invading bacteria and host cells of mammalian organisms. A whole range of techniques from Monte Carlo simulation of molecular level events to Information Theory-based analytical treatment are currently employed.
Current Projects
1. Theoretical analysis of the structure of gene regulation and signal transduction networks
2. Modeling of gradient sensing and locomotion in neural growth cones, single yeast cells and various mammalian cells
3. Information Theory analysis of signal propagation in living systems
4. Modeling of molecular level events in cardiac myocites and other excitable and non-excitable cells
5. Reconstruction of developmental networks of cell-cell interactions
6. Analysis of the influence of geometry on cell fate determination in diverse developmental settings
7. Construction of a database/simulation tool for investigation of signaling pathways
Publications
Levchenko, A., Bruck, J. and Sternberg, P.W. Scaffold proteins can alter multiple parameters of MAP kinase signaling modules. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 97(11):5818-23 (2000)
Levchenko, A. Computational cell biology in the post-genomic era. Molecular Biology Reports 28(2):83-9 (2001).
Levchenko, A., Iglesias, P.A. Models of eukaryotic gradient sensing: application to chemotaxis of amoebae and neutrophils, Biophysical Journal 82: 50-63 (2002)
Iglesias P.A., Levchenko, A., Modeling the Cell's Guidance System. Science's STKE (2002), http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sigtrans;2002/148/re12
Hoffmann, A.*, Levchenko, A..*, Scott, M.L. and Baltimore, D. The IκB-NF-κB signaling module: temporal control and selective gene activation. Science, 298: 1241-1245 (2002) (selected as the Hot Paper by The Scientist and as Exceptional paper by Faculty of 1000)
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Presentations
