Molecular evolution of stochastic switching

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Orkun S. Soyer, University of Exeter
• Friday 08 April 2011, 15:00-16:00
• Small lecture theatre, Microsoft Research Ltd, 7 J J Thomson Avenue (Off Madingley Road), Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Microsoft Research Cambridge Talks Admins.

While fitness benefits of phenotypic variance (i.e. stochastic switching) under fluctuating environments has been shown both experimentally and theoretically, it is not well understood if fluctuating environments can result in incremental evolution of molecular mechanisms that underpin this phenomena. A potential molecular mechanism that can lead to stochastic switching is noisy bistable dynamics in gene regulation. In this talk, I will summarise results from an in silico evolution study where we have simulated molecular evolution of a simple regulatory network consisting of a single gene under fluctuating selection on gene expression levels. We find that the main outcome of fluctuating selection is the evolution of increased evolvability in the network; system parameters evolve towards a nonlinear regime where small changes cause large changes in expression level. In contrast to this broad observation of increased evolvability, we find that bistability evolves only under environments with specific type of fluctuations and in presence of noise. We find that both evolvability and bistability evolve only in a range of specific environmental fluctuation rates, however, once evolved they are maintained under a broader range of rates. These results provide the first direct evidence that bistability and stochastic switching in a gene regulatory network can emerge as a mechanism to cope with fluctuating environments.

This talk is part of the Microsoft Research Cambridge, public talks series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3)
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Guy Emerson's list
• Interested Talks
• Microsoft Research Cambridge, public talks
• Optics for the Cloud
• PMRFPS's
• School of Technology
• Small lecture theatre, Microsoft Research Ltd, 7 J J Thomson Avenue (Off Madingley Road), Cambridge
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31
• ndk22's list
• ob366-ai4er
• personal list
• rp587

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.