CPM Seminar
Spatio-temporal Oscillations within Bacteria
Andrew Rutenberg
Physics Department
Dalhousie University
E. coli locate their division midplane through the oscillation of "Min"
proteins from end to end of the 2 micron bacterium, with a period of a
minute. We show how a reaction-diffusion system can describe this phenomenon.
Since there are only on the order of one thousand copies of each protein
inside the bacterium, stochastic effects can be significant. We have modeled
stochastic effects and we find that bacteria express sufficient copies of
proteins to minimize division errors.
Monday, November 3rd 2003, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)
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