Homepage of Laurence Loewe

The research interests you find on these pages are my personal research interests that I currently pursue in my spare time. The research interests associated with my current work can be found on my homepage at the Centre for Systems Biology at Edinburgh. Since I haven’t had a lot of spare time lately, the texts below are in need of some updating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Address:

Dr. Laurence Loewe
Center for Systems Biology Edinburgh
School of Biological Sciences
University of Edinburgh
Darwin Building
Kings Buildings
Mayfield Road
Edinburgh EH9 3JU
Scotland UK
Tel: +44 (131) 6 51 9080

Laurence dot Loewe
at ed  dot ac dot uk

 

 

 

Nothing in biology
makes sense except
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 observations, while others could explain the world, but are too complex to help us at all. With my simulations I want to understand increasingly realistic models of evolution in detail. In order to increase the molecular realism in my simulations I have started to work in intracellular molecular systems biology. I hope to link the insights gained from systems biology simulations back to the big evolutionary questions of how many mutations of what effect can be expected in various situations. This requires large amounts of computing time. I started evolution@home, the first global computing system for evolutionary biology, to meet these computing needs.

Much of my work has focused on understanding the evolutionary consequences of changes in the DNA that are harmful, but only to a very small extent. Such changes are hard to detect, but can have a big impact on the long-term survival of endangered species and on the way that adaptive evolution works.

To gain a more mechanistic insight into the effects of DNA changes on fitness, I am now working in systems biology. I hope that the construction of detailed models of intracellular molecular interactions will shed some light on the frequency of various mutational effects. The systems that I'm interested in include circadian clocks, signal transduction pathways and RNA metabolism.

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
  

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 homepage at the University of Edinburgh.