There is another opportunity to join our team as postdoc. Details can be found at: https://zagorskigroup.com/open-positions/. I encourage to contact me in advance. We wait for your applications till 14 February 2024!

Last week we participated in conference “Condensed Complexity” – The Essence of Information Processing and Cognition?, https://indico.cern.ch/event/1311584/overview. The conference program included three sessions on processing information by biological systems and was great opportunity for networking.

We organize conference ‘Dynamics of biological systems: emergent phenomena at different scales’ on 1-3 December. We have excellent line-up of speakers and expect many great contributions from participants! The conference is stationary in Krakow with possibility to attend on-line. Register now at: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1290437/

This week the 36th Marian Smoluchowski Symposium on Statistical Physics is taking place in Krakow. On Tuesday Helder presented our joined work on robustness of Turing patterns in developing tissues. The project is ongoing and we got lot of useful feedback.

Today Joanna successfully defended her Bachelor thesis on the role of repressilator in modelling of the mammalian clock. Good luck Joanna in your future research!

Today Qi Qin who is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, will give a talk on integrons that are bacterial genetic elements that play important roles in microbial adaptation. The talk will be focused on integrated molecular and quantitative framework for characterising integrons in environmental bacterial hosts. The talk will take place at 12:00 in room D-2-43. Everyone is welcome!

The results of joined project with Sokolowski group at FIAS on self-maintained stability of gene expression patterns in the absence of morphogen gradients are now available on-line at https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00537 . By combining microscopic stochastic simulations of gene expression and analytically derived conditions for pattern stability we identify optimal repression strength ratio between genes in neighbouring domains of pattern mimicking gap gene expression in fruit fly.

On Monday, Jakub Wojciechowski from group of prof. Kotulska at Wroclaw University of Science and Techonology, presented his research on amyloids and their interactions. The talk was focused on computational methods to identify aggregation-prone regions in proteins. Further, Jakub discussed possible relations between amyloids produced by the gut microbiome and human disease-related amyloids. The talk triggered discussion on complexity of the identified network of amyloid-amyloid interactions.

Together with Maciej we gave a talk on formation of gene expression patterns in biological systems. The seminar attracted physicists with various backgrounds. We received many insightful questions on connecting developmental biology with its description in terms of physical models.

Michael Ramírez Sierra from Sokolowski group at Center for Multiscale Modelling in Life Sciences and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies gave a talk on the role of stochasticity in cell fate specification in the early mouse embryo. The talk ignited discussion on spatial, temporal, and signalling factors that affect patterning precision of the developing mouse embryo.