BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Engineering morphology in plants and microbes - Fernan Federici\, 
 Synthetic Biology
DTSTART:20121123T130000Z
DTEND:20121123T133000Z
UID:TALK40560@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:24938
DESCRIPTION:The engineering of multicellular systems could exploit the adv
 antages of spatial organization and cellular differentiation. It could als
 o expand the range of information processing capabilities using simple dis
 tributed and coupled responses to produce complex outputs. Our work uses b
 acterial colonies and biofilms as simple multicellular systems\, with the 
 aim of transferring these morphogenetic principles into plants. I will tal
 k about two of our current projects in bacteria (in collaboration with Pau
 l Steiner and Tim Rudge)\, and also some of our work with plant systems:\n
 \n1. Fractal-like patterns and physical self-organization in large bacteri
 al population\n\nTR and PJS have developed fast\, large-scale biophysical 
 and genetic modeling tools for simulating biofilms. Using these tools we h
 ave revealed emergent properties of cell-shape that give rise to self-simi
 lar fractal-like morphology in biofilms\, and confirmed this with high res
 olution confocal microscopy. I will present these results\, and show how t
 his approach can inform engineering of multicellular systems\, including e
 xtension to plant biophysics.\n\n2. Synthetic segmentation\n\nUsing princi
 ples from developmental biology\, we are designing bacterial transcription
  networks that will divide a biofilm into segments of distinct gene expres
 sion in response to a gradient. We are combining ratiometric characterizat
 ion of parts (developed in collaboration with James Brown) with high- thro
 ughput computational modeling to evaluate attainable regions of network sp
 ace. This work has highlighted natural motifs\, and novel circuits that wi
 ll be useful in engineering complex multicellular behavior. We will also t
 alk about regulatory elements that we are developing to build such systems
  in plants and a novel technique for their characterization.
LOCATION:Department of Plant Sciences\, Large Lecture Theatre
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR