Plenary Lecture

Saccharomyces cerevisiae METABOLIC PROCESS BY MATHEMATICAL MODELLING AND in-vivo  ¹³C-NMR

Professor Claudio Rossi
Director of the Department of Chemical and Biosystem Sciences,
University of Siena,
Via Aldo Moro,
2 – 53100 Siena
ITALY
E-mail: rossi@unisi.it

Abstract: The understanding of the metabolic behavior of complex systems -such as eukaryotic cells- needs the development of new approaches able to deal with the complexity arising from the huge amount of interactions occurring within a living system. Since these interactions are ultimately responsible for an organism’s form and functions we developed a mathematical model including many metabolic compartments interacting each other by fluxes of material.
In this lecture we will discuss the ability of this approach to describe the metabolic responses of Saccharomyces cerevisiae –which represents an ideal eukaryotic cell - to exogenous and endogenous stress conditions.
Metabolic data of the fermentative process in yeast has been collected by in vivo 13C NMR spectroscopy; consecutively the data has been used to validate the compartimental model allowing also the estimation of kinetic constants associated with the fluxes within the model.
The robustness of the model is confirmed by the excellent agreement between the experimental and simulated data; furthermore the model correctly predicts the fermentative metabolism of yeast undergoing different stress conditions.


Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Claudio Rossi, was born in Siena, Italy 2nd, October 1952.

Academic Curriculum

• Research associate, Institute of General Chemistry, University of Siena, from November 1981.

• Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Siena, from November 1987.

• Full Professor of Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Siena, from November 1994.

• Honorary Professor of the “Universidad del Salvador”, Buenos Aires, Argentina, from June 2001.

• Director of the Department of Chemical and Biosystem Sciences, University of Siena, from November 2002.

• Coordinator of the Scientific Committee of the “Polo Universitario Colle di Val D’Elsa”, University of Siena from April 2004.

Professor Claudio Rossi, is referee of international scientific journals and he is also in the list of the experts for the evaluation of national and european projects. He was chairman of important scientific conferences: “Ecological Physical Chemistry” (1990), “Tempos in Science and Nature, Structure Relation and Complexity”, (1998), “Brownfields” (2004). He was also “Guest Editor” of a special issue of “Ecological Modelling” Volume 186, issue 1, (2005), dedicated to publish the results obtained from the investigation of aquatic regions. In 2001, prof. Claudio Rossi was nominated “Honorary professor” of the University “Del Salvador”, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The research activity was funded by international, national (FIRB-MIUR, CNR etc.) and local (PAR-University of Siena, Province of Siena, etc.) programs.

Prof. Claudio Rossi, coordinated the following european projects:

• Chairman of the European Advanced Study Course Programme UE, Environmental and Climate: “Environmental Change, Valuation methods and sustainable indicators”. S.Miniato (Pisa), 29th August-5th September 1998.

• Coordinator of the Alfa EU Project ALR/B7-3011/94.04-4.0058.7 (1997): "Esteros del Iberà",

• Coordinator of the EU Project, ERBIC 18-CT980262 (1998-2002) (IN-CO Program): “The sustainable managements of wetlands resources in Mercosur”, (IN-CO Program).

• Coordinator of the EU Project ICFP500A4PR02 (2001-2005), (IN-CO-DEV Program): “Tools for wetland ecosystem resource management in Eastern Africa, ECOTOOLS”.

• Coordinator of the EU Project ICA4 2002-50027 (2003), (IN-CO-DEV-Accompanying Measure Program): “Regional aspects of the suistanable managements of wetland resources, REGWET”.