10:00 - 12:00
Sat-S11
Goethe Hall
Chair/s:
Antonella Di Pizio, Sébastien Fiorucci
Computational approaches are widely used to get insights into the chemistry and biology of chemosensation. The ECRO Special Interest Group Computational Chemosensation aims to gather researchers working in computational chemosensation, to facilitate their interaction and advance computational techniques for chemical senses, but also promote the potential of computational works to promote collaborations with experimentalists. The proposed symposium is the first initiative of the group and aims to highlight computationally guided advancements in chemosensation, ranging from machine learning based predictors, to the use of computer-aided drug design tools for ligand discovery, to the multiscale simulations of chemosensory receptors, to network analyses of proteins and signaling events. Works on both taste and smell will be presented in the symposium. We expect that bringing together computational researchers from different fields will provide stimulating and fruitful discussions about future perspectives. Moreover, during the symposium, the ECRO special interest group will be introduced to the audience.
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Computational molecular interaction maps of signaling events within the olfactory epithelium
Sat-S11-003
Presented by: Federica Genovese
Federica Genovese 1, Shailendra Gupta 2, Suchi Smita 2, Dominique Fastus 2, Krishna P Singh 2, Matti Hoch 2, Olaf Wolkenhauer 2, 3, Antonella Di Pizio 3
1 Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, USA, 2 Department of Systems Biology & Bioinformatics, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany, 3 Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany
In the olfactory epithelium (OE), multiple mechanisms, like odor detection, cell regeneration, and differentiation are vulnerable to a variety of external and/or internal factors. However, the understanding of the cell-to-cell communications and molecular events associated with these mechanisms are still not fully characterized. To provide a global vision of the OE and cross-talks between its different cell types, we prepared maps related to signaling and molecular events in sustentacular cells, microvillous cells, Bowman’s glands, trigeminal nerve fibers, horizontal basal cells, globose basal cells, and olfactory sensory neurons accessible via an interactive, searchable, web-based platform through MINERVA, a well-established tool used for the presentation of disease maps (https://www.sbi.uni-rostock.de/minerva/).
The molecular single-cell and interaction maps we developed will serve to conceptually visualize and analyze complex mechanisms within single cell types as well as among different cell types. The developed maps provide various entry points to the users to access the manually curated information at the cellular, process/pathway, and molecular level. The maps are designed with the aim to serve heterogeneous communities involved in olfaction including clinicians, research scientists, systems biologists, and industrial partners. In the web platform of the maps, users can identify and prioritize diagnostic/therapeutic markers associated with various olfactory diseases. For this, we developed various user-friendly plugins that help in mapping and analyzing experimental and clinical data directly onto the map. Here we provide a quick overview of manually annotated known signaling events within OE cells and highlight knowledge gaps that need further investigation.
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