Skip directly to : top of page
Santiago Schnell
Assistant Professor of Informatics- Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology
- Adjunct Assistant Professor of Physics
- Associate Director of the Biocomplexity Institute
Research Interests
Biology deals with phenomena that are intrinsically more complex and more difficult to investigate than those normally studied in other natural sciences. In recent years, systems biology has led to important insights into many fundamental questions using mathematical and computational modelling as a research tool.
Prof. Schnell is interested in applying systems biology techniques to study complex biochemical reactions and embryology. His research focuses in three areas:
Enzyme kinetics: Determination of kinetic parameter and reaction mechanisms
Biochemical reactions take place continuously in all living organisms, and most
of them involve proteins called enzymes, which act as remarkably efficient catalysts.
Therefore, almost everything that happens in life is affected by enzymatic catalysis
and biochemical kinetics. 
Our research has focused on developing new techniques for
measuring the kinetic parameters of biochemical reactions and rethinking old theories
of enzyme action. We also focus on the development of algorithms and approaches to
determining reaction network mechanisms from time course data.
Macromolecular crowding as a factor in cellular evolution
Nowadays there is no doubt that living cells have high macromolecular content.
We are studying the effect of macromolecular crowding in the reaction kinetics.
We also are focussing our attention to the evolutionary role of crowding in cells.
Is macromolecular crowding essential to life? As far as we know, all modern cells
have a high macromolecular content. In fact, it is now recognise that cells must
have a mechanism for the synthesis and regulation of crowding agents. This system
seems to be energetically expensive. If evolution has selected cells which maintain
with a high macromolecular content, crowding must be important for the cell. What
are the roles that crowding is playing as a factor in the cellular evolution?
Multiscale modeling in biology
Understanding biology at larger scales of integration remains fascinating and vitally important for applications ranging from biosciences to psychology and population biology. Indeed, biological phenomena no longer seem arbitrary. They share many organizing principles from signal transduction to developmental regulation, which allow parsimonious descriptions despite historical contingency. Unravelling these principles requires novel interdisciplinary approaches unifying physical, computational and biological techniques.
Spurred by this
realization, as well as by increases in computing power, scientists have
increasingly sought to understand the shared principles of how the collective
interactions of biological agents can produce emergent phenomena: how do
developing cells interact locally to produce a spherical cluster of cells
such as a somite or a tumour? We are focused on the complex mechanisms that
govern segmentation in embryos and tumour formation. In particular, we are
interested in investigating the mechanical patterning which connects genetic,
molecular and cell activities with the macroscopic tissue deformations that
shape the spherical and curvature structures in the embryo.
Please follow the publication links to find out more about Prof. Schnell's work.