What is CDMC Research?

In the post-genomics era, we are faced with an overflow of information on cellular molecular components and their known or predicted interactions, the sum of these molecular interactions being defined as the “interactome” of cells. Because the cell is such a crowded molecular environment, a plethora of interactions occurs between macromolecules. Cellular functioning in such an environment requires that it has evolved mechanisms to sort out, at the molecular level, which interactions between macromolecular partners result in recognition and function and which are non-specific “noisy” interactions having no apparent function.

Understanding interactomes - the Cellular Dynamics of Macromolecular Complexes

This implies deciphering which interactions are important to cellular function and which are not and when they are biologically significant. The sheer number of molecules and complexity of interaction networks makes the task of defining functional interactions challenging and has promoted interdisciplinary approaches in order to delineate the significant interactions.

It is a major challenge of CDMC research to integrate the approaches from distinct scientific disciplines to map molecular interactions in cells in order to understand the full complexity of biological processes.

This is a prerequisite for the advancement of scientific knowledge as well as for commercial applications, including the identification of useful biomarkers in disease models and the identification of protein interactions that might prove to be meaningful drug targets; two subjects of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. In this context, it is of paramount importance to first understand and to quantify the dynamics of the assembly of macromolecular complexes, as they control the flow of information inside the cell. The CDMC training program provides an extremely fertile training ground for tackling these questions and CDMC mentors are at the forefront of this research internationally.