Colloquia
Frederic Yui-Ming Wan
CAM COLLOQUIUM
“Size Change and Robust Biological Development”
Frederic Yui-Ming Wan
Department of Mathematics
University of California - Irvine
Monday - April 7, 2008- 4:00PM in 127 Hayes-Healy Center
*TEA AT 3:30PM in the Math Lounge - 257 Hurley*
Biochemical processes leading to morphogen gradient formation (and correspondingly the biological development of the organism) are expected to be affected to varying degrees by environmental changes. For example, rate constants for diffusion, protein synthesis, binding, internalization, degradation, etc., would change to different degrees in response
to an altered ambient temperature. Surprisingly little data can be found in the literature on how significant will such changes be over the temperature
ranges organisms encounter in the wild (at least for insect cells). Our own preliminary experimental efforts gradually acquire some such data. For example, the use of metabolic labeling of Drosophila S2 cells showed that overall protein synthesis rate doubles approximately every 5.9 degrees C. It has been known for sometime that at low temperature, flies grow slower but end up larger, including having larger wings. On the other hand, at
higher temperatures they have smaller wings but faster disc growth. By a mathematical model based on known biochemical processes at work in the organism, we show how size change offers a mechanism to maintain
(size-normalized) robust biological development for the Drosophila wing disc.
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*Supported by NIH grants P50-GM076516, R01-GM067247 and R01-GM075309. R01 grants were awarded through the Joint NSF/NIGMS Initiative for mathematical biology.
