Population Variability and Distributions from Absorbing State Dynamics

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Self-organization occurs in many complex living and non-living systems. It is a great challenge to understand the basic principles of self-organization in these systems and to distinguish phenomena in living systems that is shared with non-living systems from phenomena that is generic only to living systems. The PIs in this project will compare self-organization in granular and soft matter systems to self-organization in a yeast cell population. Both systems seem to share common principles of self-organization and the PIs will uncover the basic principles of self-organization of yeast by comparing to the detailed knowledge that exists of self-organization in granular materials. The PIs will engage students to participate in computer simulations and train them in dynamical systems theory and its diverse applications. In particular the PIs will study population dynamics combining experiments, computations and theory. On the experimental side, the program is focused on three important aspects: First, the PIs will measure the response of populations to genome rewiring. Genome-rewiring is a perturbation exposing the complex cellular dynamics beyond the specific fast relaxing responses observed under more standard perturbations. Second, the PIs will measure the dynamics under controlled conditions, at high temporal resolution over many cell generations covering the wide dynamic range characterizing gene interactions and other intracellular processes as well as population processes such as adaptation. Third, the PIs will study the dynamic coupling between the population and the environment. Their computational efforts will concentrate on constructing a unique framework for population dynamics based on cellular random organization, connecting the intracellular complex dynamics with population processes.