CITRIS Research Exchange: Using Mathematical Models to Help Understand Planar Cell Polarity in Developmental Biology

March 7, 2007: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location: 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building, the Maria & Dado Banatao Conference Room, UC Berkeley

Using Mathematical Models to Help Understand Planar Cell Polarity in Developmental Biology
Claire Tomlin [Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley]

12:00 p.m. on March 7 in 290 HMMB, UC Berkeley

Watch talk online | View presentation (ppt)

Part of the CITRIS Research Exchange at UC Berkeley. The complete schedule for the spring semester is online at RE-Spring2007. Sponsored by Infineon Technologies.

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Abstract:

In this talk, methods that we have designed to analyze and help to identify certain protein regulatory networks will be presented. Hybrid automata represent one suitable modeling framework, as the protein concentration dynamics inside each cell are modeled using linear differential equations; inputs activate or deactivate these continuous dynamics through discrete switches, which themselves are controlled by protein concentrations reaching given thresholds. We present an iterative refinement algorithm for computing discrete abstractions of a class of symbolic hybrid automata, and we apply this algorithm to a model of multiple cell Delta-Notch protein signaling. The results are analyzed to show that novel, non-intuitive, and biologically interesting properties can be deduced from the computation, thus demonstrating that mathematical modeling which extrapolates from existing information and underlying principles can be successful in increasing understanding of some biological systems.

However, more often, only incomplete abstracted hypotheses exist to explain observed complex patterning and functions in cellular regulatory networks. The second part of the talk will present our results in developing a partial and ordinary differential equation model for Planar Cell Polarity signaling in fly wings. We explicitly demonstrate that the model can explain the complex behaviors of the system, and can be used to test developmental hypotheses, such as the function of certain protein alleles, and the relationship between cell geometry and polarity.

Biography:

Claire J. Tomlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, where she also holds the Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Faculty Scholarship in the School of Engineering. She received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. She has held visiting research positions at NASA Ames and Honeywell Labs. Prof. Tomlin is a MacArthur Fellow (2006), and is a recipient of the Okawa Foundation Award (2006), the Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council (2003), MIT Technology Review's Top 100 Young Innovators Award (2003), the AIAA Outstanding Teacher Award (2001), an NSF Career Award (1999), and the Bernard Friedman Memorial Prize in Applied Mathematics (1998). Her research interests are in control systems, specifically hybrid control theory, and she works on air traffic control automation, flight management system analysis and design, and modeling and analysis of biological cell networks.