Stefan Schuster (born 7 November 1961 in

Meissen Meissen (in German orthography: ''Meißen'', ) is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrecht ...

) is a German biophysicist. He is professor for

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

at the

University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The un ...

Life

Stefan Schuster studied biophysics at the Humboldt University Berlin and wrote his PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof.

Reinhart Heinrich Reinhart Heinrich (24 April 1946 – 23 October 2006) was a German biophysicist. He was professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and best known as one of the founders, with Tom Rapoport, of metabolic control theory in parallel with simi ...

at the Department of Theoretical Biophysics at Humboldt University, Berlin (Title: "''Theoretical studies on the interrelation between time hierarchy in enzymatic reaction systems and optimization principles''"). In 2003 he got a professorship at the Department of Bioinformatics at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. Stefan Schuster is one of the spokesmen of the Jena Centre for Bioinformatics (JCB). Stefan Schuster is currently editor of the

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

journal '' BioSystems''. His younger brother is the stage director Robert Schuster.

Research

The

research Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

by Stefan Schuster comprises a wide range of topics in bioinformatics and

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

. These include, among others: * Evolutionary game theory * Metabolic control analysis * Biochemical oscillations *

Metabolic pathway analysis Metabolic network modelling, also known as metabolic network reconstruction or metabolic pathway analysis, allows for an in-depth insight into the molecular mechanisms of a particular organism. In particular, these models correlate the genome wi ...

Stefan Schuster has significantly contributed to the development of elementary mode analysis. That method has amply been used ever since for determining

metabolic pathway In biochemistry, a metabolic pathway is a linked series of chemical reactions occurring within a cell. The reactants, products, and intermediates of an enzymatic reaction are known as metabolites, which are modified by a sequence of chemical reac ...

s and diverse applications in

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...

such as calculating

optimal Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

molar yields. Schuster and his coworkers used the method, for example, for analyzing

penicillin Penicillins (P, PCN or PEN) are a group of β-lactam antibiotics originally obtained from ''Penicillium'' moulds, principally '' P. chrysogenum'' and '' P. rubens''. Most penicillins in clinical use are synthesised by P. chrysogenum using ...

production and NAD⁺ metabolism as well as for predicting the viability of ''

Escherichia coli ''Escherichia coli'' (),Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. also known as ''E. coli'' (), is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Escher ...

'' mutants. He contributed to the development of software for metabolic pathway analysis. An application of intense

biochemical Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology an ...

interest is the question whether

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

s and other higher

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...

s could convert

fatty acid In chemistry, particularly in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated. Most naturally occurring fatty acids have an unbranched chain of an even number of carbon atoms, fr ...

s into

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

. While biochemical

textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textboo ...

knowledge says that this would be infeasible, ''

in silico In biology and other experimental sciences, an ''in silico'' experiment is one performed on computer or via computer simulation. The phrase is pseudo-Latin for 'in silicon' (correct la, in silicio), referring to silicon in computer chips. It ...

'' analyses by Christoph Kaleta, Stefan Schuster and coworkers showed that there are, in principle, several entangled routes on which

gluconeogenesis Gluconeogenesis (GNG) is a metabolic pathway that results in the generation of glucose from certain non-carbohydrate carbon substrates. It is a ubiquitous process, present in plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms. In vertebrat ...

from fatty acid is feasible. This theoretical

prediction A prediction (Latin ''præ-'', "before," and ''dicere'', "to say"), or forecast, is a statement about a future event or data. They are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge. There is no universal agreement about the exact ...

found considerable attention in

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...

articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

. Research on metabolic pathways includes

flux balance analysis Flux balance analysis (FBA) is a mathematical method for simulating metabolism in genome-scale reconstructions of metabolic networks. In comparison to traditional methods of modeling, FBA is less intensive in terms of the input data required for c ...

, which is used, for example, for explaining the Warburg effect. The book of Reinhard Heinrich and Stefan Schuster "''The Regulation of Cellular Systems''" was reviewed by

Athel Cornish-Bowden Athel Cornish-Bowden (born 3 April 1943) is a British biochemist known for his numerous textbooks, particularly those on enzyme kinetics and his work on metabolic control analysis. Education and career Athel Cornish-Bowden worked on pepsin cata ...

. He wrote: ''"For general readers, it would be a major advance if books like this one could help to overthrow the ideas of rate-limiting steps that have bedevilled the biochemical conception of metabolism for so long, preventing biotechnology from realizing many of the objectives that were promised when genetic engineering first became possible. For specialists already concerned with the kinetic behaviour of multi-enzyme systems, this is a book they need to have"''.

References

External links

Homepage Department of Bioinformatics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schuster, Stefan Humboldt University of Berlin alumni German biophysicists 1961 births People from Meissen Academic staff of the University of Jena German academic journal editors Systems biologists Theoretical biologists Living people