Tobias Bollenbach is affiliated with IST Austria and will move to the campus in fall 2010.
His group works in the field of Biological Physics and Systems Biology.

Research:
We are broadly interested in gene regulation, cell signaling, and cellular information processing: Cells can detect the presence of signals in their environment and respond by triggering specific gene expression response programs. We currently focus on the following topics:

1. Cells are often faced with the simultaneous presence of multiple signals that individually elicit opposite gene expression responses. How do cells resolve such gene regulatory conflicts? As a first step, we use fluorescent transcriptional reporters, microscopy, and a special robotic system to reveal how the bacterium Escherichia coli responds to combinations of antibiotics.
  
2. Optimality has been suggested to be a key design principle of biological systems. But to what extent are complicated cellular responses optimized for a functional goal? To address this question, we systematically measure and synthetically manipulate genome-wide gene expression responses in microbes. For these single-celled organisms, the maximization of cell survival and growth is a plausible, clearly defined, and experimentally accessible functional goal.

3. We are further interested in cell differentiation, morphogen gradient formation, and other processes in metazoan development. We develop theoretical descriptions of developmental mechanisms to understand their key properties and limitations. We collaborate with developmental biology labs to test our theoretical predictions and thus improve our understanding of animal development.

 
Selected publications:

• Bollenbach, T., Quan, S., Chait, R., and Kishony, R. (2009). Nonoptimal microbial response to antibiotics underlies suppressive drug interactions. Cell 139, 707-718.
• Bollenbach, T.*, Pantazis, P.*, Kicheva, A.*, Bökel, C., González-Gaitán, M., and Jülicher, F. (2008). Precision of the Dpp gradient. Development 135, 1137-1146.
• Kicheva, A.*, Pantazis, P.*, Bollenbach, T.*, Kalaidzidis, Y., Bittig, T., Jülicher, F., and González-Gaitán, M. (2007). Kinetics of morphogen gradient formation. Science 315, 521-525.
• Bollenbach, T., Kruse, K., Pantazis, P., González-Gaitán, M., and Jülicher, F. (2005). Robust formation of morphogen gradients. Phys Rev Lett 94, 018103.

Current contact:
Tobias Bollenbach
Department of Systems Biology
Harvard Medical School
200 Longwood Ave
Boston, MA 02115
USA

Open positions in the Bollenbach Lab:
We have several openings for Postdocs and PhD students. If you are interested in joining our interdisciplinary lab, please send your application (incl. CV, publication list, 3 reference letters) to E-Mail .  Microbiologists, molecular biologists, and physicists are particularly encouraged to apply.
Students are also encouraged to apply at the IST Austria PhD program.