Speaker
Description
Quorum-sensing is a biochemical signaling mechanism used by different bacterial taxa to communicate with their co-specifics. This communication allows bacteria to jointly respond to environmental conditions by collectively expressing particular traits once a certain population density is achieved. Its complex structure and multiple bureaucratic layers of gene activation make it difficult to precisely assess how these responses are modulated. Furthermore, the impact of such responses on population dynamics are even more difficult to infer, because biochemical signals and population densities are intrinsically coupled. One such example is that of P. aeruginosa growing on casein media. In order to grow and reproduce, P. aeruginosa must break casein into amino-acids by collectively expressing enzymes such as elastase. In the hopes of understanding how quorum sensing mediated expression of elastase is triggered, as well as its impacts to population dynamics, I estimate parameters for increasingly complex models and matching experiments, one at a time.
