UIF Master Calendar

Title: “Integrating experiments, theory and simulations into whole-cell models”

Speaker: Zan Luthey-Schulten,Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics and Biophysics, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Dr. Luthey-Schulten will present a whole-cell kinetic model (4DWCM) of JCVI-syn3A, a minimal bacterial cell with a reduced genome of 493 genes that has retained few regulatory proteins or small RNAs. She will show how Cryo-electron tomograms provide cell geometry and ribosome distributions for a minimal bacterial cell by using time-dependent behaviors of concentrations and reaction fluxes from stochastic-deterministic simulations over the cell cycle. Revealing how the cell balances the demands of its metabolism, genetic information processes, and growth, offering an insight into the principles of life for a minimal bacterial cell. Allowing for the energy economy of each process including the active transport of amino acids, nucleosides, and ions to be analyzed, the WCM reveals how emergent imbalances lead to slowdowns in the rates of transcription and translation. Dr. Luthey-Schulten will conclude by explaining why the integration of experimental data is crucial in building a kinetic model from which a genome-wide distribution of mRNA half-lives, multiple DNA replication events that can be compared to qPCR results, and the experimentally observed doubling behavior of a minimal bacterial cell can emerge.