Abstract

The development of an organism relies on the tightly orchestrated behaviour of many cells. How do these cells regulate their fate in order to build complex structures, like the heart or the brain? Underlying cell fate regulation are complex molecular programs and, and, with recent technological developments, we are now in a position to describe these molecular processes with increasing detail. But understanding how cellular states and behaviour emerge from these processes remains conceptually challenging. Given these challenges, can we infer mechanisms of cell fate regulation from tissue level measurements? In this talk I will discuss how methods from theoretical physics can help bridging these scales. Giving the example of lineage tracing in organ development will show that through the interplay of many cells generic patterns of clonal dynamics emerge, and how these patterns provide a quantitative basis for deciphering cell fate specific information.

CV

2003-2009 Studied physics at the University of Constance and Technical University Munich

2009-2013 Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich

2013-2015 Postdoc at the University of Cambridge

2015-2016 Herchel Smith fellow at the University of Cambridge

Since 2017 Group leader at Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden