“Diversity and collective behavior in bacterial populations”

Speaker: Thierry Emonet
Associate Professor of MCDB & Physics
Yale University
 

Talk Summary: Substantial non-genetic diversity in complex behaviors, such as chemotaxis in E. coli, has been observed for decades, but the relevance of this diversity for the population is not well understood. What are the trade-offs that bacteria face in performing chemotaxis in different environments? Can population diversity be tailored to resolve these trade-offs? How does diversity affect collective behavior and how does collective behavior shape diversity? I will discuss our recent theoretical and experimental efforts to uncover the functional role of non-genetic diversity in cellular migration.

Speaker Bio: Thierry Emonet is an Associate Professor of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology & Physics at Yale University and a Paul Allen Investigator. He studied physics at the ETH Zürich, and received his PhD in theoretical astrophysics from the University of La Laguna (Spain) in 1998, before doing postdocs at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder CO and The University of Chicago, discovering key mechanisms that enable magnetic field to float to the surface of the Sun to create Sunspots. Switching to biology he studied the molecular origin of temporal fluctuations in the behavior of individual bacteria. This work helped reveal that in single cells behavioral response and spontaneous fluctuation in behavior are not independent because of fundamental relationships between fluctuation and response in chemical systems. At Yale since 2007 his laboratory combines molecular and biophysical experimental methods with theory and simulations to study how biological systems sense, compute and self-organize to make decisions. As model systems his lab uses the chemotaxis system in bacteria, the olfactory system in Drosophila, and (with the Holley lab) the developing tailbud in zebrafish.  His recent work has focused on quantifying the functional trade-offs faced by individuals in fluctuating environments, and the role of non-genetic variation and communication in resolving such trade-offs and shaping overall population success. His work is supported by NIGMS and the Paul G Allen Family Foundation and he has received fellowships from NSF, the Whitehall Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

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