WISB is delighted to announce that Andras Gyrogy, Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, will be coming to deliver a talk on Thursday 23rd November. Andras is part of the NetBio Group. Please email wisb@warwick.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

Talk abstract

Without accounting for the limited availability of shared cellular resources, the standard model of gene expression fails to reliably predict experimental data obtained both in vivo and in vitro. To overcome this limitation, we developed a dynamical model of gene expression explicitly modeling competition for scarce resources. In addition to accurately describing the experimental data, this model only depends on a handful of easily identifiable parameters with clear physical interpretation. Based on this model, we characterized the combinations of protein concentrations that are simultaneously realizable with shared resources, matching experimental data both in vitro and in vivo. Application examples of these results include the design of optimal experiments for parts characterization, the characterization of parts whose expression is not accessible through direct measurements, and the standardization of cell-free extracts. Finally, some ongoing efforts will be discussed within the context of biological controller design to address some of the issues caused by the scarcity of shared resources.

Biography

Andras completed his PhD with Domitilla Del Vecchio at MIT (collaborating with Jim Collins and Ron Weiss), during which time he visited Richard Murray at Caltech to work with their TX-TL system. He then spent 1.5 years as a postdoc with Murat Arcak at UC Berkeley (collaborating with Adam Arkin). Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi blending wetlab experiments with theoretical analysis on (bio)networks. Building upon the above influences, Andras’s work focuses on network dynamics and synthetic biology (e.g., optimal experiment design, system identification, model order reduction). What he is especially interested in is developing quantitative tools and standardized probes for predicting mRNA and protein expression precisely both in vitro using cell-free extracts and in vivo.

 

WISB has been funded by the above bodies