Speaker
Description
Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA molecules that replicate independently of the chromosome and are widely found in bacteria and other organisms. In nature, plasmids are ubiquitous and can carry various genes that play essential roles in the life of bacteria. In synthetic biology, plasmids are used as the standard tool to equip cells with designed gene circuits. Despite their importance, the theoretical literature on plasmid copy number dynamics remains fragmented, and many models are only described in the supplementary material of experimental studies. This situation often leads experimentalists to rely on models whose mechanistic basis is not fully established. In this poster, I present a new mathematical modeling framework to connect single-cell models of plasmid replication and segregation with experimentally measured plasmid copy-number distributions in growing populations. The approach couples a structured population model with a Markov jump process.
