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VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:UW-Madison-Physics-Events
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SEQUENCE:0
UID:UW-Physics-Event-2641
DTSTART:20120417T170500Z
DURATION:PT1H0M0S
DTSTAMP:20260420T062120Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20120405T222544Z
LOCATION:4274 Chamberlin
SUMMARY:Towards quantifying biological complexity: Lessons from circad
 ian rhythms\, Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar\, Amir Assadi\, UW Depar
 tment of Mathematics
DESCRIPTION:Computational complexity has been the subject of intensive
  research with rewarding theoretical and practical accomplishments.  S
 hannonaEuroTMs mathematical formalism to quantify and study digitized 
 information has provided a powerful framework for applications to scie
 nce and engineering. In biology\, the analog nature of the system obse
 rvables and aEurooesignal-encodingaEuro pose a formidable challenge to
  draw biologically insightful parallels between the digital informatio
 n theory and the analog theory of biological information\, even if suc
 h a theory could potentially be developed.<br><br>
\n <br><br>
\nWe pr
 ovide an outline of a systematic program that aims to better understan
 d the phenomena generally recognized as the culprit to aEurooebiologic
 al complexityaEuro\, namely\, variation of phenotypic traits within a 
 single genotype. A quantitative theory of phenotypic variation leads t
 o the theory of biological complexity at DNA level\; which is as a cen
 tral question in theoretical biology\, and sheds new light on the evol
 ution of diversity of life.<br><br>
\n <br><br>
\nWe use the physics a
 pproach to extract the hints from a data set of gene expression time-s
 eries (courtesy of the Chory Lab\, Salk Institute)\, regarded as obser
 vations from a complex dynamical system in the ground state and subjec
 t to various perturbations. We provide a sketch of the steps to comput
 e variations at the very first molecular stage past the DNA. In parall
 el to KolmogrovaEuroTMs theory of computational complexity\, we propos
 e a multi-scale multi-resolution theory to elucidate ideal measures of
  the most efficient description of computations initiated at the genom
 e level\, leading to the phenotypic observables. We discuss an applica
 tion to aEurooequantifying phenotypic plasticityaEuro and formulate ne
 w hypotheses regarding the DNA-level sources and molecular mechanisms 
 of plasticity. These results are obtained via massively parallel and d
 istributed computation\, which offer exciting new research problems of
  their own. <br><br>
\n
URL:https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/?id=2641
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