Group leader: Mark A. Peletier

Group name: PDEs in the Life Sciences

Other staff members involved: R. Planque (mathematical modelling), Joke Blom,

Jason Frank, Johannes Krottje, Nga Pham Thi, Ben Sommeijer, Jan Verwer (all

scientific computing)

Location: Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam

Web page: http://www.cwi.nl/projects/pdels

E-Mail: peletier@cwi.nl

Phone: +31 20 592 4226 (fax +31 20 592 4199)

 

Relevant research interests:

Our group focuses on numerical and theoretical analysis of partial differential equations, with an eye on applications in the life sciences. On the numerical side we place the emphasis on methods that are adaptive in both space and time, allowing us to handle systems with strong spatial gradients and stiff time discretizations.  Simultaneously we use and develop theoretical methods to gain qualitative and quantitative understanding of the systems involved.

 

Current system biology activities:

* Relation between diffusive gradients, metabolic control analysis, andsignal transport (with the Westerhoff group and Kholodenko)

* Axonal growth cones: relation between local rules and resulting axonal connections (bundling and debundling) (with Van Pelt and Van Ooijen)

* Continuum models for lipid bilayers

* Integration of modularity, adaptive simplification, and local particle descriptions into PDE-based simulations (with Kaandorp, Van Schuppen, and the Westerhoff group)

Relevant collaborations (see above):

 

Representative publications (possibly links to pdf files):

B. Lastdrager, Numerical solution of mixed gradient-diffusion equations modelling axon

growth, Technical Report MAS-R0203 Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, P.O. Box

94079, 1090 GB AMsterdam, The Netherlands, January 2002.

 

Christof Francke, Pieter W. Postma, Hans V. Westerhoff, Joke G. Blom, and Mark A. Peletier, Why the Phosphotransferase System of  Escherichia coli Escapes the Diffusion

Limitation of Signal Transduction, Transport and Metabolism that Confronts  Mammalian Cells,  CWI Report MAS-R0218 Accepted for publication in Biophys. J.

 

M.A. Peletier, H.V. Westerhoff, and B.N. Kholodenko, Control of Spatially Heterogeneous

and Time-varying Cellular Reaction Networks: A New Summation Law, CWI Report MAS-R0226  Submitted to Biophys. J.

 

J.G. Blom and M.A. Peletier, A continuum model of lipid bilayers CWI Report MAS-R0229

Submitted to Euro. Jnl of Applied Mathematics.