Center for the Study of Complex Systems
Seminar Series
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
NOTE: 4448 East Hall
12:00 - 1:00 pm
SPEAKER:
Qiong Yang
Assistant Professor, Biophysics, University of Michigan
Title:
From molecules to development: revealing simple rules of biological clocks
Abstract:
Organisms from cyanobacteria through vertebrates make use of biochemical and genetic oscillators to drive repetitive processes like cell cycle progression and vertebrate somitogenesis. Despite the complexity and diversity of these oscillators, their core design is thought to be shared.
Notably, most of them contain a core positive-plus-negative feedback
architecture. Here we use the early embryonic mitotic cycles in *Xenopus* as a motivating example and discuss how the positive feedback functions as a bistable switch and the negative feedback as a time-delayed, digital switch (Yang and Ferrell, Nat Cell Biol, 2013; Ferrell, Tsai, and Yang, Cell,
2011). I will next discuss our ongoing and future research projects on
essential biological clocks in early embryos. We employ mathematical
modeling, microfluidic techniques, and optical imaging for a quantitative
understanding of self-organizing behaviors of single cells and single
molecules during early embryo development.
