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Accueil du site > Animations Scientifiques > Séminaires 2008 > Biological strategies of motility

Biological strategies of motility

par Webmaster - 16 janvier 2008

Orateur :

Massimo Vergassola, Groupe de Génétique in silico, Département Génomes et Génétique, Institut Pasteur, Paris

Salle :

C023 (RDC LR6 côté CECAM)

Sujet :

I shall discuss the challenges faced by living organisms trying to locate and move towards a source of nutrients, odors, pheromones, etc., i.e. substances emitted by the source and randomly transported by the environmental medium. Microorganisms, such as bacteria performing chemotaxis, can rely on local concentration gradients to guide them towards the source, yet they have to cope with the stochastic nature of the microscopic world and must reliably infer local gradients from noisy series of molecule detections. Macro-organisms, such as insects and birds, are spared by molecular noise but they lack local cues pointing towards the source because chaotic mixing breaks up regions of high concentration into random and disconnected patches, carried by winds and currents. Thus macroscopic animals detect patches very intermittently and they must devise a strategy of movement based upon sporadic cues and partial/missing information. Understanding of the strategies evolved by living organisms also has technological applications to robotics.

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