Speaker
Description
Biochemical networks are notoriously large and complex and involve many unknown parameters. As a consequence, various reduction methods for their analysis have been proposed. A common critique of this approach is that biochemical complexity is intrinsic and that any “reduced” model is therefore doomed to miss essential features. However, minimal models can be particularly valuable to illustrate/investigate/suggest general and fundamental qualitative mechanistic principles, rather than to provide quantitative predictions or detailed explanations of specific phenomena.
In this spirit, I will present a few minimal models that produce characteristic dynamical behavior, such as the emergence of periodic oscillations or multistability arising from symmetry breaking. The examples are taken from joint work with Alex Blokhuis and Peter Stadler (oscillations), and with Angela Stevens (symmetry breaking and multistability).
