The Exposome is the environmental equivalent of the human genome and includes lifetime exposures to environmental pollutants in food, water, and homes, as well as diet, medications, physical activity, and daily stressors. Exposome research takes a holistic view and studies how the human body responds to these exposures, and how the exposures interact with the human physiology and its underlying genome, metabolome, and proteome. The overriding goal of the HERCULES Center at Emory and Georgia Tech is to establish a scientific basis for exposome research. HERCULES stands for “Health and Exposome Research Center: Understanding Lifetime Exposures.”
Systems Biology addresses the dynamic interactions among the components of living cells or organisms and their environments. Research in computational systems biology is often based on large, heterogeneous datasets. It uses techniques from mathematics, computer science, and engineering in an attempt to integrate these datasets and to convert their information content into explanatory descriptions of the functioning of living systems. The Integrative BioSystems Institute (IBSI) at Georgia Tech is a forum for multi-scale, multi-disciplinary systems approaches toward solutions of grand-challenge problems in biology. IBSI's main focus is the development and application of enabling technologies that are needed to solve some of the grand-challenge questions of biology and medicine of the 21st century.
During this first workshop of its kind, we will explore how existing or yet to be developed methods of systems biology may be used to advance our understanding of the exposome.