Mariana Gómez-Schiavon

UNAM

Collaborators: Hana El-Samad, UCFS/Altos

Title: CoRa —A general approach for quantifying biological feedback control

Short Abstract:  Feedback control is a fundamental underpinning of life, underlying homeostasis of biological processes at every scale of organization, from cells to ecosystems. The ability to evaluate the contribution and limitations of feedback control mechanisms operating in cells is a critical step for understanding and ultimately designing feedback control systems with biological molecules. CoRa —or Control Ratio— is a general framework that quantifies the contribution of a biological feedback control mechanism to adaptation using a mathematically controlled comparison to an identical system that lacks such feedback. CoRa provides a simple and intuitive metric with broad applicability to biological feedback systems.

Presenter Biosketch: Mariana obtained her B.Sc. degree in Genomic Sciences from UNAM (2009), her M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering and Physics from CINVESTAV Monterrey (2011) under the supervision of Dr. Moisés Santillán, and her Ph.D. degree in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Duke University (2016) under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Buchler. Her graduate research explored how organisms can use epigenetics and gene expression stochasticity to deal with fluctuating environments, focusing on the properties and evolutionary emergence of bistable switches. Following her Ph.D. studies, during her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Hana El-Samad at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), she studied the principles and limitations of cellular feedback control. At LIIGH, she aims to understand how the dynamic properties of gene regulatory circuits emerge, proliferate and persist through natural selection. Her work combines evolutionary theory, population genetics, and biophysical models of gene regulatory circuits. Her expertise comprises mathematical modeling of gene regulatory circuits and nonlinear dynamics.

Link to Full Abstract: GOMEZ-SCHIAVON_MARIANA

Link to Poster: Poster Mariana Gómez-Schiavon

Contact: mgschiavon@liigh.unam.mx