Seminar Title: “The decision landscapes in living cells”

Abstract: Live cells routinely make decisions that are informed by external stimuli and endogenous noisy regulatory networks. At this point, we lack a coherent understanding of how these decisions are made, although we have developed mechanistic descriptions of various instances of decision making processes in specific systems. In this talk, using the recent experimental and modeling analyses of cell migration, proliferation and death conducted at our lab, I will suggest a methodology for quantitative understanding of cellular decision making. I will also demonstrate that this method has a powerful predictive power, with particular applications to therapeutic interventions in cancer and other complex diseases. This approach can be extended to other systems and can lay the foundations for a more integrative analysis of cell function.