Location: Fields Institute , 222 College Street, Toronto

***Joint Seminar Centre for Mathematical Medicine and
Department of Cell & Systems Biology***
Ramsay Wright Building, 25 Harbord Street, Room 432

December 1, 2009- 3:00 p.m.
Michael Elowitz, Caltech Division of Biology

Associate Professor of Biology and Applied Physics: California Institute of Technology; Bren Scholar; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dynamic Signal Encoding for Stress Response and Development

The Elowitz Lab is interested in how genetic circuits, composed of interacting genes and proteins, enable individual cells to make decisions, oscillate, and communicate with one another. Recent work in bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cells has begun to reveal new and unexpected ways that cellular signal transduction systems encode information, and the functional role that such encoding schemes play in regulatory and developmental circuits.

A bout Michael Elowitz: He reported one of the first "synthetic" regulatory networks, the "repressilator" (Elowitz & Leibler 2000). His lab has developed and applied live-cell imaging and quantitative modeling techniques to study gene expression in single cells. They have used these methods to study the regulatory networks underlying several fascinating physiological and developmental phenomena. He is currently an Associate professor at Caltech and an HHMI Investigator.

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