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SUMMARY:Limits in stochastic cell biology - Glenn Vinnicombe (Engineering\
 , University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20190314T130000Z
DTEND:20190314T140000Z
UID:TALK121306@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Anne Herrmann
DESCRIPTION:We look at two related problems where noise and small numbers 
 provide limitations on the behaviour of cells.\nFirstly "The Poisson box
 ”: For a simple birth death process (constant birth rate\, exponential d
 eaths) it is well known that the variance equals the mean. We conjecture t
 hat for two coupled birth death processes it is not possible for both proc
 esses to simultaneously beat this bound. That is\, if X is controlling Y\,
  and vice versa\, then in order for the variance in Y to be reduced below 
 the Poisson limit then the variance in X must be above it. For cell biolog
 y\, this suggests that large fluctuations in the population of one molecul
 ar species might be a natural consequence of it being implicated in regula
 ting a second. The conjecture is known to hold in some circumstances - a g
 eneral proof remains elusive though.\nSecondly\, Optimal clocks: How do yo
 u make accurate clocks from independent random events (such as the product
 ion\, degradation or  modification of a molecule). If the number of events
 /molecules is fixed then the answer is well known - you line up the events
 \, one after the other\, all with the same rate. If the number of events i
 s itself random then the optimal topology can be much more complex. Howeve
 r\, for many distributions the optimal answer is well approximated by a si
 mple mechanism\, which we have implemented as part of a synthetic oscillat
 or in E-coli. \n
LOCATION:MR11\, Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Camb
 ridge
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