CAN BACTERIA PREDICT THEIR ENVIRONMENT? PROSPECTS AND IMPLICATIONS

PABLO ALEJANDRO SÁNCHEZ; PABLO IGNACIO MARTÍN; ENRIQUE REWALD

Granada

Congreso; 8th International Congress on Autoimmunity; 2012

Kenes International

Synchronization of biological clocks is fundamental for the coordination of rhythmic behavior between elements in a large complex system. It is known that diverse intercellular coupling mechanisms lead to synchronized oscillators present in basic physiological functions such as cardiac function, respiration, insulin secretion, and others.Synchronization supports stabilize certain behavior arising from a network of intrinsically noisy and unpredictable elements. Occasionally, however, synchronization of oscillations can lead to failure in a biological system, as in epileptic seizures.In this brief presentation we attempt to extract some essential ingredients and properties that characterize the phenomenon of “anticipated synchronization” in the presence of external additive noise perturbing the dynamical processes in a population of bacteria. Synthetic biology is a new way to recreate the complex behavior of cells from biochemical reactions that govern the genetic regulation and signaling. Nonlinearity and stochasticity rise naturally from the underlying biochemistry and become appreciate tools from the fields of nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics for the generation of experimental and theoretical models. In these models, the elements of the quorum sensing machineries are presented as clocks that trigger synchronous behavior in a network architecture of bacterial individuals. In addition, most quorum sensing systems involve a critical cell density for generation of coordinated activity.Finally, we show a possible impact on gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases and prospects for future treatments.