QLS Seminar - Today, 1 October at 11h00 "Controlled and Uncontrolled Growth: Mathematical Models of Regeneration and Tumor Protection" by Daniel Sanchez-Taltavull - University of Bern

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

Dear All,

Today, 1 October at 11:00 CET, Dr. Daniel Sanchez-Taltavull (University 
of Bern, Department for Biomedical Research, Visceral Surgery Research 
Laboratory) will give a seminar titled:

*"Controlled and Uncontrolled Growth: Mathematical Models of 
Regeneration and Tumor Protection**"

*Tissues in higher organisms are organized as hierarchically structured 
cell populations, where only a small number of cells, the stem cells, 
have the capacity for infinite self-renewal. In this talk, we explore 
how stochastic models are used to show that such hierarchies protect 
against uncontrolled, cancer-like growth.

However, this design that protects most tissues has a drawback, slow 
regeneration, leading to an exception: the liver. After an injury, fully 
differentiated hepatocytes can re-enter the cell cycle and proliferate 
without requiring stem cells or progenitors to produce new cells.

To explore how this mechanism is controlled, we use single-cell RNA-seq 
to dissect the early events of liver regeneration. We show how 
macrophage signaling to hepatocytes drives the process, and how 
mathematical models, calibrated on the single-cell data, allow in-silico 
knockouts that identify a key regenerative signal.

Finally, we explore how these two concepts, restricted self-renewal for 
cancer protection and direct hepatocyte division for rapid repair, can 
be reconciled.

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The seminar will take place in the Common area, Old SISSA building, 
second floor - Via Beirut, 2

Indico: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11189/

*
* You are all most welcome to attend!

Best regards,

  Erica

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