Scientists are generating more biological data than ever before, and new technologies now allow us to peer inside the cell in ways we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.  But even the most advanced tools can’t explain how a living cell actually works as a complete system.

That’s the challenge at the heart of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Mathematical Analysis of Cellular Systems (MACSYS). The Centre brings mathematicians and computational scientists together with biologists to pursue a bold goal: building a predictive, fully computational model of a living cell.

This is the second episode of our two-part series on MACSYS.  Our guests are the leaders of MACSYS - Centre Director Professor Trevor Lithgow and Deputy Director Professor Jennifer Flegg. Together, they explore what a whole‑cell model is, why it matters, and how bridging wet‑lab and dry‑lab science is essential to tackling one of the most ambitious challenges in modern biology.

Our host for this episode is Dr Haripriya Sridharan – a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with MACSYS at The University of Melbourne.

Episode webpage: https://www.therandomsample.com.au/podcast/macsys-pt2/