Bingkan Xue – Theoretical Biophysics Candidate Seminar

How organisms adapt to varying environments: Emergent patterns of responses through evolution

The response of physical systems to external conditions can be understood using principles such as symmetries and conservation laws.  What are the general principles for understanding biological organisms that exhibit diverse and adaptive responses to their environment? In this talk, I show that evolution gives rise to common patterns among the organisms’ responses to the environment. I present a theoretical framework that describes the emergence of such patterns, and discuss how the framework can be further developed to study biological as well as physical systems with history-dependent responses.