The Institute Colloquium: Stochasticity and cell fate
Date
Monday, May 9, 2016 12:45 - 13:45
Speaker
Richard Losick (Harvard University)
Location
Raiffeisen Lecture Hall, Central Building
Series
Colloquium
Tags
Institute Colloquium
Contact
Url
Cell fate in biological systems is often governed deterministically by external cues or inherited polarity. Sometimes, however, cell fate decisions are made stochastically. I will present two examples of noise-driven processes that govern cell fate choices in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. In one cells switch stochastically between motility and chaining in a process that is controlled by stochastic competition between just two proteins. As evidence that stochastic competition is sufficient I will show that the switch can be reconstructed in the heterologous host of E. coli. The second example comes from the process of spore formation in B. subtilis which commences with a switch from binary to asymmetric division. The cell pole at which the asymmetrically positioned septum is formed is chosen randomly. I will report how the stochastically generated cue of the polar septum is read out to activate a cell-specific transcription factor by a protein associated with the cytokinetic machinery.