Physics (Internal)

From biological networks to complex behaviors

This event is part of the Biophysics/Condensed Matter Seminar Series.

Abstract:
It is now clear that Phil Anderson’s famous maxim “More is Different” holds true even in biology. For example, microbiologists now agree that bacteria commonly engage in complicated collective behaviors that require individual cells to receive, interpret, and respond to information from one another and their environment. Underlying these behaviors are complex biological signaling networks. Understanding these signaling networks poses interesting new physics problems. In this talk, I will discuss two examples from my own research: 1) how the identification of transcription factor binding sites naturally leads to fascinating questions about the “inverse” statistical mechanics of hard rods in a disordered potential and 2) how we can use methods from information theory and statistical physics for quantifying the information processing capabilities of bacterial signaling networks.