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The ability of cells, such as bacteria, to sense their environments and respond to them—often better than human-engineered systems can—is the focus of an upcoming talk in Santa Fe.
Pablo Iglesias of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University is giving the talk entitled “An Engineer’s View of the Cell” at 7 p.m., January 20 at the Santa Fe Complex, 624 Agua Fria Street, in the Santa Fe Railyard. It is the third in a new series of "Q-bio" talks sponsored by the Laboratory’s Center for Nonlinear Studies (T-CNLS) that focus on the emerging scientific field of quantitative biology.
“The means by which a cell can sense the surrounding environment and shape its responses to these cues is of daunting complexity,” Iglesias said.
Feedback control theory, a branch of engineering that has enabled the analysis and design of complex man-made systems, such as planes, trains and automobiles, helps explain cellular decision making because many cellular networks have regulatory designs (such as feedback and feedforward loops) that parallel those found in man-made systems, he said.
Iglesias will illustrate designs used both in engineering and in biology. Examples from biology include the directed movement of cells of the immune system in response to bacterial infections, the regulatory system controlling cholesterol levels in cells, and varying aspects of the cell-division machinery.
No previous knowledge of biology or engineering is necessary to follow the lecture.
The next scheduled lecture in the series is February 17, when Laboratory scientist S. Gnanakaran of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6) will discuss how protein folding is measured and predicted and how a particular type of misfolding contributes to more than 20 debilitating ailments, most notably Alzheimer's disease.
The lectures are intended to feature accessible introductions to various aspects of quantitative biology and provide in-depth discussions of specific problems.
All lectures are free and open to the public. For more information about the lecture series, click here.
