The Mathematical Biology Seminar series presents Xue Gong on “Mathematical models in emergent behaviors in biological complex systems” on Wednesday, Jan. 21, from 5:15 pm to 6:10 pm at Morton 313.
Xue Gong
Abstract: Emergence in complex systems is a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities, but the smaller or simpler entities themselves do not exhibit such properties. In this talk, we will study two examples of the emergent behaviors in biological complex systems.
One example is a large population of yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Biologists have long observed periodic-like oxygen consumption oscillations in yeast populations in a bioreactor and the periods of such oscillations are nearly integer divisors of the calculated period of a yeast cell cycle. We will show some results on both the deterministic and stochastic models in yeast cell division cycles, where cells are considered to be coupled oscillators with the cell cycle of each cell as one oscillator. Another example is the cognitive processes in the brain. We will look at a model in a heteroclinic binding problem in neuronal systems which exhibit multi-sensory dynamics. Under certain assumptions, interesting mathematical results can be found for this model.
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