Terry Hwa

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Extensive quantitative experiments in the past decades have established simple
empirical laws of resource allocation obeyed by exponentially growing bacteria
subjected to different environmental or genetic perturbations. Combinations of
these laws, together with their kinetic extensions, have led to quantitative
account of a number of long-standing phenomena in microbiology. In this talk, I
will briefly recount how we embarked on the path of top-down
phenomenological studies, exhibit the striking universality of the law of
ribosome allocation across diverse bacterial lineages, and describe a recent
study establishing how this law is implemented molecularly via simple
regulatory processes. The findings provide a rare view of “dimensional
reduction” by a living cell, i.e., how a cell manages to collapse the complex,
high-dimensional dynamics of metabolic reactions underlying cell growth to
quantitatively “perceive” the growth rate, and allocate resources in accordance
to the growth rate. Overall, these studies showcase how the basic methodology
of classical physics can be used to discover simple organizing principles of living
systems and construct quantitative, predictive theories linking molecules to
cellular behaviors.

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UC San Diego
Lecture Hall III, Department of Physics
Contact: Michael Lässig