Prof. Johann Rohwer
Title: Associate Proffessor
Office: A108 JC Smuts Building
Phone: +27-(0)21-808-5843
Fax: +27-(0)21-808-5863
Email: jr@sun.ac.za
Apart from having his own group, Prof Jannie Hofmeyr is part of the Triple-J Group with Proff. Johann Rohwer and Jacky Snoep.
The Triple-J Group studies the control and regulation of cellular processes using theory, computer modelling and experimental approaches. A main project is the development of a theoretical framework, based on control analysis, for describing metabolic regulation in an integrative cellular context that includes metabolism, signal transduction and the genetic hierarchy; aspects of this theory are studied experimentally in yeast and bacteria, using controlled cultivation in bioreactors and quantitative analysis with HPLC, mass spectroscopy and NMR.
The group is active in the field of computational systems biology, both in the development of kinetic models of real-life systems (sugarcane metabolism, comparative analysis of glycolysis in various organisms, yeast cell cycle), and of new modelling tools (PySCeS and JWS Online).
Main research areas
- The application of in vivo NMR spectroscopy for direct, non-invasive real-time determination of intracellular metabolite levels in microbial cells.
- Building and extending kinetic models of various cellular systems, notably sucrose metabolism in sugarcane and fermentative free-energy metabolism in Lactococcus lactis.
- The development of software tools for computational systems biology within the framework of Python and SciPy, with an emphasis on symbolic control analysis, as well as parameter fitting and optimisation.