Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Mathematisch-Naturwissen­schaft­liche Fakultät - International Research Training Group 1740

IRTG Colloquium (1/12)

  • Wann 21.02.2012 von 11:15 bis 14:00
  • Wo Christian-Gerthsen-Hörsaal
  • iCal


On Tuesday, 21st February, the members of the IRTG 1740 meet at 11:15 am at the institute of physics (Newtonst. 15, 12489 Berlin). The Colloquium starts with a talk of Prof. Lev Tsimring (University of California, see also below) in the Christian-Gerthsen-Hörsaal.

After the speach all members, participating researchers, PhD-students and research students of the IRTG are welcome to join the meeting at room 3'101.

The topics are:
 

  • Introducing the new PhD-students
  • Short report of the state
  • Preparation / review of the travel to Brazil
  • IRTG-organisation votings
  • Disussion about PhD-student's courses and credit points
  • Other matters




Generation and synchronization of oscillations in synthetic gene networks

In this talk, I will describe our recent experimental and theoretical work on small synthetic gene networks exhibiting oscillatory behavior. Most living organisms use internal genetic "clocks" to govern fundamental cellular behavior. While the gene networks that produce oscillatory expression signals are typically quite complicated, certain recurring network motifs are often found at the core of these biological clocks. One common motif which may lead to oscillations is delayed auto-repression. We constructed a synthetic two-gene oscillator based on this design principle, and observed robust and tunable oscillations in bacteria. Computational and theoretical modeling suggests that the key mechanism of oscillations is a small time delay in the negative feedback loop. In a strongly nonlinear regime, this time delay can lead to long-period oscillations that can be characterized by ``degrade and fire'' dynamics. We also demonstrated synchronization of synthetic gene oscillators across cell population using a variant of the same design in which oscillators are synchronized by a chemical signal freely diffusing through cell membranes.


Prof. Lev Tsimring's Curriculum Vitae

2010 - present: Associate Director, BiocCircuits Institute, University of California, San Diego 2009 - present: Research Physicist, BioCircuits Institute, University of California, San Diego

1998 - 2009: Research Physicist, Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego

1999 - 2009: Associate Director, Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego

1996 - 1998: Associate Research Physicist, Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego

1992 - 1996: Assistant Research Physicist, Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego

1980 - 1991: Research Assistant, Research Scientist, Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Applied Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences, Gorky, USSR

1988 - 1991: Senior lecturer, Radiophysics Department, Gorky State University, Gorky, USSR