Back to Top

Nonlinearity and Climate Group

  • Home
  • Research
    • Oceanic rogue waves
    • Filamentation
    • Single-column surface-atmosphere climate modelling
    • Tipping points in the climate system
  • Projects
  • People
    • Prof. KASPARIAN Jérome
    • Dr. GOYETTE Stéphane
    • Dr. BRUNETTI Maura
    • Dr. MENDES Saulo
    • Dr. Berti Nicolas
    • FOSSAS TENAS Ariadna
    • GOMEL Alexis
    • RAGON Charline
    • Leoni Sara
    • Bhatnagar Siddharth
    • El-Ainouni Otmane
    • Alumni
      • Dr. NGUYEN Liliane
      • Dr. MESMAN Jorrit
      • Dr. EELTINK Debbie
      • Dr. ARMAROLI Andrea
      • DUCIMETIERE Yves-Marie
      • BEGUIN Chloé
      • REY Joan
      • MALLES Jan-Hendrik
  • Publications
  • Teaching
  • Coordinates

Optimal localization patterns in bacterial protein synthesis

Wednesday, the 31th January at 14:00,
room CV003 Uni Carl Vogt

Jacky Nguyen

Université Paris 6

Abstract

Protein synthesis is a process of fundamental importance for life, and involves a complex network of chemical processes and molecular units, such as messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and ribosomes. In the model bacterium Escherichia coli, the strongly condensed DNA nucleoid located at midcell causes strong excluded- volume effects, pushing most mRNAs and ribosomes to the cell poles . Because of this strong spatial inhomogeneity, mRNAs localized to different intracellular locations will be translated at different rates. We will use theoretical models inspired by statistical physics, to quantify the rate of protein synthesis associ- ated with any given mRNA localization pattern. Among the simplest models that can describe phenomena with such a nontrivial spatial structure are the reaction-diffusion equations, which characterize the dependence of concentra- tions of molecular species, such as mRNAs and ribosomes, on space and time. In this presentation, we will seek the mRNA distribution ρ that maximizes the protein synthesis rate given a fixed set of resources, e.g the total mRNA and ribosome number Namely, this results in a constrained, functional optimization problem.

Université de Genève
GAP Nonlinearity and Climate
Boulevard Carl Vogt, 66 
CH - 1205 Genève

GAP secretariat
Tel. +41 22 379 05 00
Fax. +41 22 379 05 59

© 2022 Nonlinearity and Climate Group

Log In