QLS Guest Seminar - Wed. 13 June at 11:00

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QUANTITATIVE LIFE SCIENCES  GUEST SEMINAR

Wednesday, 13 June 2018 at 11:00,
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building, via Beirut 2


Speaker: Anton Zadorin, LBC, CBI, ESPCI/ParisTech Paris, France


Title: Natural selection in compartmentalized environment with reshuffling

Abstract:
The emerging field of compartmentalized in vitro evolution, where 
selection is carried out by differential reproduction in each 
compartment, is a promising new approach to protein engineering. From 
practical point of view, it is important to know the effect of the 
increase in the average number of genotype bearing agents per 
compartment. This effect is also interesting on its own in the context 
of primordial evolution in the hypothetical RNA world. The question is 
important as genotypes with different phenotypes in the same compartment 
share their fitness (the number of produced copies) rendering the 
selection frequency-dependent. I will show the results of a theoretical 
investigation of this problem in the context of selection dynamics for a 
simple model with an infinite population that is periodically 
redistributed among infinite number of identical compartments, inside 
which all molecules are copied without distinction with the success rate 
as a function of the total genomic composition in the compartment. 
Surprisingly, with a linear selection function, the selection process is 
slowed down only approximately inversely proportional to the average 
number of individuals per compartment. I will also demonstrate exact 
forms of the governing equations for some nonlinear selection functions. 
Finally, I will expose an intriguing open problem of an apparent phase 
transition for an exponential selection function seen in numerical 
experiments, which is missed by the current infinite population theory.

Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8598/

Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail: qls at ictp.it