TITLE:

Flipping the Switch: Simulation Methods for Noisy Biological Network Dynamics

DATE:

Friday, October 28th, 2016

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 314

SPEAKER:

Dr. Elizabeth Read, Assistant Professor. Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. University of California, Irvine.

ABSTRACT:

All processes in living cells are orchestrated by biochemical networks. These networks are mapped out in increasing detail by modern

experimental technologies. However, a major gap exists in our ability to translate experimental knowledge of networks into predictive models

of function. Computational modeling can help bridge this gap by enabling in silico hypothesis-testing. However, computational modeling of

complex network dynamics faces challenges such as the curse-of-dimensionality (presence of a large number of interacting biomolecular species

gives rise to intractable equations) and multiple dynamic timescales (which result in impractically long compute-times).

This talk will discuss how computational approaches adapted from the fields of Chemical Physics and Molecular Dynamics can be adapted to the

network scale, in order to address current challenges in quantitative Systems Biology. Recent work will be presented that combines biochemical

kinetics with rare-event sampling algorithms to analyze multistability and state-switching in gene regulatory networks.

HOST:

Dr. Rob Edwards

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