Abstract: Cell growth, DNA replication, mitosis and division are the fundamental processes by which life is passed on from one generation of eukaryotic cells to the next. The eukaryotic cell cycle is intrinsically a periodic process but not so much a ‘clock’ as a ‘copy machine’, making new daughter cells as warranted. Cells growing under …

Abstract: TBA

Abstract: Cellular, chemical, and population processes are all often represented via networks that describe the interactions between the different population types (typically called the "species"). If the counts of the species are low, then these systems are often modeled as continuous-time Markov chains on the d-dimensional integer lattice (with d being the number of species), …

Abstract: We’re all familiar with sleep, but how can we mathematically model it? And what determines how long and when we sleep? In this talk I’ll introduce the nonsmooth coupled oscillator systems that form the basis of current models of sleep-wake regulation and discuss their dynamical behaviour. I will describe how we are using models …

Cells make individual fate decisions through linear and nonlinear regulation of gene network, generating diverse dynamics from a single reaction pathway. In this colloquium, I will present two topics of our recent work on signaling dynamics at cellular and patient levels. The first example is about the initial value of the model, as a mechanism …

The circadian clock orchestrates a vast array of behavioral and physiological processes with a 24-hour cycle, enabling nearly all organisms -- from bread mold to fruit-flies to humans -- to anticipate and adapt to the Earth's day. Entrainable by environmental cue, the rhythm itself is generated by a self-sustained molecular oscillator present in nearly every …