About Ihor Lemischka

Ihor Lemischka directs the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where he collaborates with physicists, computational biologists, bioinformaticians and experimental biologists to map out and manipulate the elements that direct stem cell fate. He spent 21 years on the faculty at Princeton University in New Jersey working out the molecular mechanisms controlling cell decisions.

Read an interview with the featured expert

• Ihor Lemischka: stem cells meet systems biology

Featured expert's recommendations

• Alon, U. An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits (Chapman & Hall/Crc Mathematical and Computational Biology, Boca Raton, Florida, 2006).
  This very quantitative book is nonetheless accessible and geared toward biologists.

• Bolouri, H. Computational Gene Modelling of Regulatory Networks-a Primer (Imperial College Press, London, 2008).
  This mathematically based book explains how to approach modelling and describes various kinds of models, with links to software and examples.

• Nanog safeguards pluripotency and mediates germline development
  This study shows that Nanog expression fluctuates in embryonic stem cells, providing a temporary predisposition toward cell differentiation.
  Chambers, I. et al. Nature 450, 1230-1234 (2007).

• Transcriptome-wide noise controls lineage choice in mammalian progenitor cells
  and
  Cell fates as high-dimensional attractor states of a complex gene regulatory network
  These studies provide experimental evidence that mammalian attractor states exist and how system-wide noise can shift cells between states.
  Chang, H. H., Hemberg, M., Barahona, M., Ingber, D. E. & Huang, S. Nature 453, 544-547 (2008).
  Huang, S., Eichler, G., Bar-Yam, Y. & Ingber, D. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 128701 (2005).

• Regulatory networks define phenotypic classes of human stem cell lines
  This example of a high-throughput systems biology approach uses innovative computational techniques to derive an extended network for stem cell pluripotency.
  Muller, F-J. et al. Nature 455, 401-405 (2008).

• A protein interaction network for pluripotency of embryonic stem cells
  This example of a low-throughput systems biology approach derives a high-confidence protein-protein interaction network centred on the transcription factor Nanog.
  Wang, J. et al. Nature 444, 364-368 (2006).