Workshop Metabolism and mathematical models: Two for a tango | 4th Edition
November 19-20, 2024 | ONLINE WORKSHOP
Samraat Pawar, Imperial College London, UK
Title talk: Thermal-metabolic constraints on complex ecosystem dynamics (AKA how can we *really* engineer microbiomes?).
Short abstract: Metabolically-driven interactions between biological species in any local ecosystem typically form large, complex networks that generate interesting and often unpredictable system dynamics. A new Mount Everest for theoretical biology, with a wide range of applications, is the development of methods to control and engineer these complex, nonlinear systems. To this end, we need to understand a fundamental problem that has occupied Biologists, and in particular, Ecologists, for almost two centuries: how do these seemingly improbable systems assemble and persist in (an increasingly) fluctuating and uncertain real world? In this talk, I will outline the challenge, and present recent progress towards the goal of engineering microbiomes under a ubiquitous source of environmental fluctuations: temperature.
This workshop is being organised in the context of two projects, both with the Inria European Team Erable. One of the projects involves a partnership with the University of São Paulo (USP), in São Paulo, Brazil, more specifically the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) and the Institute of Biomedical Sciences - Inria Associated Team Capoeira - and the other involves the Inesc-ID/IST in Portugal, ETH in Zürich and EMBL in Heidelberg - H2020 Twinning Project Olissipo.