Project description
Biophysical models to explain microbial fluctuations
Biology operates in a dynamic environment where microorganisms replicate accurately through the regulated ‘cell cycle’, coordinating growth, division, and DNA replication. Understanding the cues and feedback mechanisms involved is key. The ERC-funded BIGR project will develop integrated models that regulate multiple cellular traits and quantify the interactions among cellular processes. It explores coarse-grained models on long timescales (DNA replication, gene expression, and cell division) alongside short timescales involving water flow and ion transport across membranes. The project will leverage expertise in the physics of stochastic processes to create biophysical models explaining microbial responses to fluctuations and introduce new analytical tools to improve our understanding of how variability affects population growth and fitness.
Objective
Biology operates in a dynamic, changing environment, with fluctuations occurring over many time and length scales. Microorganisms are capable of duplicating themselves accurately over a short time in this noisy environment. This self-replication, known as the “cell cycle”, must be tightly regulated in order for replication to be efficient. Key processes such as growth (both of volume and biomass), division and DNA replication must be coordinated. What biophysical cues are measured by the cell and what feedback is utilized to achieve this tight control is a fundamental, open and inherently interdisciplinary question. The goal of this proposal is to build integrated models which can account for the simultaneous regulation of multiple cellular traits, and account, quantitatively, for the coupling between the various cellular processes. We will consider coarse-grained models that operate both on long timescales – the coupling of DNA replication, gene expression and cell division – and short timescales, associated with water flow and ion transport across the membrane. Building on our expertise in the physics of stochastic processes, we will develop biophysical models that explain how microbes deal with fluctuations. We will develop new analysis tools that will enable us to learn from fluctuations, in particular through the powerful methodology of causal inference, which has not been previously applied in this context. The models will allow us to study the implications of variability on the population growth and fitness, and elucidate the design principles involved. Taken together, these models will take us toward comprehensive and predictive biophysical models of bacterial growth.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsDNA
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
7610001 Rehovot
Israel