| Home |
| About |
| People |
| Links |
| SysBio? |
| Research |
| Projects |
| Pubs |
| Suppl. |
| Education |
| Courses |
| Theses |
| Info |
| Publicity |
| Talks |
| Jobs |
| Impressum |
|
|
SysBio Seminar Announcement
------------------------------------------
Topic
--------
Evolutionary Design Principles of a Bacterial Signalling Network
Who
-------
Markus Kollman, Physics Institute, University of Freiburg
Bios
-------
Markus studied physics (and engineering) in Munich and Brighton, did his PhD in Konstanz and held Postdoc positions at the FZ Jülich and the University of Palermo before joining the Timmer group.
When
---------
June 29, 1 pm
Where
----------
IST seminar room (PWR 9, 3.241)
Abstract
------------
Cellular biochemical networks have to function in a noisy environment using imperfect components. Especially networks involved in gene regulation or signal transduction allow only for small output tolerances and the underlying network structures can be expected to have evolved for inherent robustness against perturbations.
Here, we combine theoretical and experimental analysis to investigate an optimal design for the signalling network of bacterial chemotaxis, one of the most thoroughly studied signalling networks in biology. We experimentally identify intercellular variations in expression levels of chemotaxis proteins as the main source of perturbations and use computer simulations to quantify the robustness of several hypothetical chemotaxis pathway topologies to such gene expression noise. We demonstrate that the experimentally established topology of the chemotaxis network in Escherichia coli is one of the smallest sufficiently robust structures, allowing accurate chemotactic response for almost all individuals within a population. Our results suggest that this pathway has evolved to show an optimal chemotactic performance while minimising the cost of resources associated with high levels of protein expression.
Moreover, the underlying topological design principles compensating for intercellular variations seem to be universal among all known or predicted bacterial chemosensory systems.
Universität Magdeburg
University of Liège