Homepage of Laurence Loewe

These pages reflect my broader research interests. They go beyond my current work in systems biology, which is described on my homepage at the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Address:

Dr. Laurence Loewe
Center for Systems Biology Edinburgh
School of Biological Sciences
University of Edinburgh
C.H.Waddington Building
Kings Buildings
Mayfield Road
Edinburgh EH9 3JD
Scotland UK
Tel: +44 (131) 6 51 9017

Laurence dot Loewe
at ed  dot ac dot uk

Nothing in biology
makes sense except
when properly quantified
in the light of evolution.

My research centres on detailed simulations that integrate biological knowledge into models of evolution. Such models live between two extremes. Some are fully understood, but too simple to explain any observations. Others might explain the world but are too complex for us to understand them. With my simulations I investigate increasingly realistic models of evolution in detail.

Increasingly precise models of evolution have been constructed in the field of population genetics for almost a century, but various factors have been limiting progress: We need better measurements of fundamental quantities that are needed as input for models, we need easier ways of implementing these models into computer programs and we need more computing power. Much of my work has focused on addressing these limitations.

1. Using three different approaches, I measured the impact of new mutations on fitness, a fundamental quantity in all evolutionary models.
   
   • First I used mutation accumulation experiments, but it became increasingly clear that only few mutations have effects that are large enough to be detectable in the lab.
   • I then used population genetics models to measure the effects of mutations in natural populations. This works well for a certain group of harmful mutations with very small effects, but it is very difficult to learn much about beneficial mutations from this approach.
   • So I developed a new ambitious approach that builds on current systems biology simulations to measure small effects of mutations in well known systems. This approach is part of what I call evolutionary systems biology. It has the potential to bring together systems biology and evolutionary biology, combining the sophisticated molecular biology of the mechanics of life with decades of quantitative model building at the level of populations and above. Much work remains to be done here.
2. My recent work in systems biology has taught me that model building is much easier with the right tools. Much of the tedious work can be done automatically by a program that translates a specific human readable modelling language into computer executable code.
3. Finally, complex models result in complex calculations, which need huge computers that are usually reserved for others. Since increasingly realistic models will always have this problem, I started evolution@home, the first global computing system for evolutionary biology. It distributes computing tasks to many voluntary participants across the Internet and has already accumulated results worth over 400 CPU years. It currently analyses the evolution of asexual genetic systems. I plan to analyse many more evolutionary models with evolution@home, so time invested in its development will pay off by making future modelling easier.
   

Using these approaches, I am interested in exploring many fundamental and applied questions in evolution. Examples:

• The long-term survival of species can be strongly influenced by mutations of predominantly small effects on fitness. These DNA changes can affect how adaptive evolution might help species to cope with changing environments.
• Antibiotics resistance evolution threatens one of the great medical advances of the 20th century. We urgently need good quantitative models of how bacteria evolve antibiotics resistance in order to adjust our antibiotics usage patterns to minimise resistance evolution.
  

More about my research can be found on my research interests page and published results can be downloaded from my publications page. If you are interested in my teaching activities, visit my teaching page. My official entry on the website of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology is here, my page in the Center for Systems Biology Edinburgh is here and I also have a tiny homepage at the University of Edinburgh.

Short CV

• 2007 - now Postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Systems Biology Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, UK
  
• 2006 - 2007 Lecturer in Evolutionary Genetics, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK
  
• 2003 - 2006 Postdoctoral research fellow, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK
• 2003 Visiting scientist, Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, University of Heidelberg, Germany
• 2002 Dr. rer. nat., Department of Biosciences, Technical University of Munich, Germany