IPLS Seminar - Prof. Yolanda Schaerli (University of Lausanne)

Abstract: Synthetic biology has emerged as a multidisciplinary field that provides new tools and approaches to address longstanding problems in biology. It integrates knowledge from biology, engineering, mathematics and biophysics to build – rather than to simply observe and perturb– biological systems that emulate natural counterparts or display novel properties. The strength of synthetic biology is to go beyond nature’s toolkit, to test alternative versions and to study a particular biological system and its phenotype in isolation (i.e. orthogonal to the host cell) and in a quantitative manner. 

In my group we use this bottom-up synthetic biology approach to understand the mechanisms, properties and evolution of gene regulatory networks, with a focus on networks involved in spatial pattern formation - a crucial process for the development of multicellular organisms. In my talk, I will present our latest research on pattern-forming synthetic networks controlled by morphogen gradients. I will also show how these synthetic networks allow us to experimentally address evolutionary questions centring around robustness, evolvability, epistasis and evolutionary constraints.