March 26th (Fri), 9:00-11:00 <Japan Time>　[Language: English]

Speaker: Dr. Dr. Mikhail Tikhonov (Washington University St Louis)

Title: Phenotypic plasticity across timescales: physiology, ecology and evolution

Abstract:
Evolving living systems respond to changes in their environments. Attempting to predict such responses from first principles is a very ambitious task. For example, exposing E. coli to one antibiotic may increase or decrease its resistance to another, and for any given pair the mechanistic explanation of such collateral effects (or "tradeoffs") would invoke a large volume of microscopic detail. However, once measured, the architecture of the response can itself evolve over time: for example, a tradeoff can become stronger or weaker. Are there any simple rules that such evolution obeys? In this talk, I will describe our recent theoretical work exploring this question at several different scales (physiological, ecological, and evolutionary).

Co-sponsored by
- Constrained & Directional Evolution (Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas)
http://constrained-evo.org/
- Universal Biology Institute, The University of Tokyo
http://park.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/UBI/