"How Cells Decide What to Eat and What to Become:
The Physics of
Transcriptional Regulation"
Host: Eric Klavins
November 17, 2005
Location: EE 125, 10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Abstract:
An intriguing aspect of multicellular organisms is the fact
that there are a wide variety of different cell types, this despite the fact
that each and every cell carries the same genetic information. One of the key
mechanisms giving rise to distinct cellular identities is particular ``decisions''
that are made about which genes to express at different times and places in
an organism's history. Interestingly, decision making is not restricted to multicellular
organisms, nor even to eukaryotic cells. Indeed, the modern theory of gene regulation
was born out of efforts to understand how bacterial cells decide which sugars
to utilize at any given time. In this talk, I will describe the ways in which
statistical mechanics can be used to examine the regulatory processes that take
place in the lives of cells. These simple models result in surprising predictions
and I will also describe our experimental efforts to probe this rich behavior
both in test tubes and in living cells.
Biography:
Rob Phillips is a Professor of Applied Physics at California Institute of Technology.
Email: talk@ee.washington.edu
Website: http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/colloquium/