BMC Systems Biology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Host-pathogen systems biology: logical modelling of hepatocyte growth factor and Helicobacter pylori induced c-Met signal transduction Raimo Franke†1, Melanie Müller†1, Nicole Wundrack1, Ernst-Dieter Gilles2, Steffen Klamt2, Thilo Kähne1 and Michael Naumann*1 Address: 1Institute of Experimental Internal Medicine, Otto von Guericke University, Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany and 2Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Sandtorstrasse 1, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany Email: Raimo Franke -
[email protected]; Melanie Müller -
[email protected]; Nicole Wundrack -
[email protected]; Ernst-Dieter Gilles -
[email protected]; Steffen Klamt - Klamt@mpi- magdeburg.mpg.de; Thilo Kähne -
[email protected]; Michael Naumann* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author †Equal contributors Published: 14 January 2008 Received: 3 October 2007 Accepted: 14 January 2008 BMC Systems Biology 2008, 2:4 doi:10.1186/1752-0509-2-4 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/2/4 © 2008 Franke et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) stimulates mitogenesis, motogenesis, and morphogenesis in a wide range of tissues, including epithelial cells, on binding to the receptor tyrosine kinase c-Met. Abnormal c-Met signalling contributes to tumour genesis, in particular to the development of invasive and metastatic phenotypes.