RUI: Mathematical modeling of chromosome organization and segregation in bacteria

本研究项目的重点是开发和分析新的数学模型的染色体排列和分离的细菌细胞，使用数据从新月柄杆菌细菌。将探讨一系列不同的生物学问题，包括动态聚合物相互作用介导的染色体运动，细胞三维空间内的染色体结构和包装策略，细菌细胞骨架细丝的自组织模式，以及丝状结构动力学和DNA重塑。我们将使用数学模型来开发这些生物过程的新描述。 将使用各种数学建模方法，包括随机常微分方程，偏微分方程，动力系统分析和几何变分原理。 模型模拟和分析将被用来促进我们对这些过程的理解。细菌是地球生物量的主导，因此细菌细胞生物学的研究涉及生活的各个方面，包括医学，农业和生态领域。 细菌的生命周期在很大程度上取决于细胞分裂的适当进展，然而，由于这些过程发生在纳米级水平，目前对力和生化反应如何耦合到控制分裂的理解是有限的。 这里采用的方法，使用现代应用数学工具来研究细菌细胞分裂动力学，将导致更好地理解细菌细胞如何在分裂过程中精确而稳健地组织和分离其染色体拷贝，同时推动使用数学更普遍地研究生物学问题。这种定量方法将提高我们对基本细胞过程的理解，并有助于发现细菌过程的新应用，这些应用可以帮助维持和改善我们的生活质量。

This research project focuses on developing and analyzing novel mathematical models of chromosome arrangement and segregation in bacterial cells, using data from Caulobacter crescentus bacterium. A diverse set of biological problems will be explored, including chromosome movement mediated by dynamic polymer interactions, chromosome architecture and packaging strategies inside the three dimensional space of the cell, self-organization patterns of bacterial cytoskeleton filaments, and filamentous structure dynamics and reshaping of the DNA. We will use mathematical models to develop novel descriptions of these biological processes. A variety of mathematical modeling approaches will be used, including stochastic ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, dynamical system analysis and geometrical variational principles. Model simulation and analysis will be used to advance our understanding of these processes.Bacteria dominate the earth's biomass, so the study of bacterial cell biology reaches every aspect of life, including the medical, agricultural and ecological realms. The life cycle of bacteria is crucially dependent on the proper progression of cell division, however, because these processes occur at the nano-scale level, the current understanding of how forces and biochemical reactions are coupled to control division is limited. The approach taken here, using modern applied mathematical tools to examine bacterial cell division dynamics, will result in an improved understanding of how bacterial cells precisely and robustly organize and segregate their chromosome copies during division, while pushing forward the use of mathematics to study biological problems more generally. This quantitative approach will improve our understanding of essential cell processes and also aid in the discovery of novel applications of bacterial processes that can help sustain and improve our quality of life.