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SUMMARY:From sea cells to sea shells - Kirsty  Wan (University of Exeter)
DTSTART:20231004T140000Z
DTEND:20231004T150000Z
UID:TALK206722@talks.cam.ac.uk
DESCRIPTION:At the microscopic scale\, virtually everything moves. From th
 ese diverse patterns of movement\, one might hope to distinguish living fr
 om non-living matter\, bacteria from eukaryotes\, random from directed\, p
 urposeful movement. In this talk I will discuss our recent work on phenoty
 ping the motility of diverse microeukaryotes from long-time trajectory sta
 tistics. These include microswimmers that orchestrate propulsion-generatin
 g appendages (cilia and flagella) for swimming through fluids\, as well as
  organisms that glide mysteriously on surfaces without the need to resort 
 to any appendages at all. We present and derive species-agnostic measures 
 of active motility from high-speed live imaging experiments. We show how t
 o distinguish between distinct yet stereotyped states (or gaits) of activi
 ty\, and demonstrate how environmental cues (e.g. physical confinement\, l
 ight\, chemicals) induce systems-level cellular signalling whose effect be
 comes measurable in terms of transition probabilities between states. Fina
 lly\, we speculate on the implications of these findings for the evolution
  of cellular decision making in basal eukaryotes.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Newton Institute
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