"The Role of Energy Expenditure in Biological Discrimination" with Ugur Cetiner, Harvard Medical School (Online Seminar)

Title: The Role of Energy Expenditure in Biological Discrimination 

Speaker: Ugur Cetiner, Harvard Medical School 

Hosted by: Biophysics Program 

Abstract: 

Life is inherently away from thermodynamic equilibrium. However, analysis of non-equilibrium steady states has been hampered by combinatorial complexity and lack of thermodynamic interpretation. Here, we exploit a graph-theoretic representation of Markov processes to reformulate non-equilibrium steady state probabilities in a way that makes their descriptions independent of system size and gives them thermodynamic meaning. We demonstrate the power of this reformulation by greatly extending Hopfield’s classic study of kinetic proofreading, revealing how energy dissipation allows collective synergy in biological discrimination. Our results suggest how we can “follow the energy” to unravel the functional logic of non-equilibrium systems in physics and biology.

Seminars start at 4:00 pm and refreshments served at 3:45 pm. All seminars are held in the Conference Room (1116) of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) Building, unless otherwise noted.