Dr. Maria Abou Chakra, University of Toronto
Abstract: Cell cycle duration changes dramatically during development, starting out fast to generate cells quickly and slowing down over time as the organism matures. The cell cycle can also act as a transcriptional filter to control the expression of long gene transcripts which are partially transcribed in short cycles. Using mathematical simulations of cell proliferation, we identify an emergent property, that this filter can act as a tuning knob to control gene transcript expression, cell diversity and the number and proportion of different cell types in a tissue. Our predictions are supported by comparison to single-cell RNA-seq data captured over embryonic development. Additionally, evolutionary genome analysis shows that fast developing organisms have a narrow genomic distribution of gene lengths while slower developers have an expanded number of long genes. Our results support the idea that cell cycle dynamics may be important across multicellular animals for controlling gene transcript expression and cell fate.
Bio: Dr. Maria Abou Chakra is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Toronto. She is a theoretical biologist with a focus on complex biological phenomena. She has broad expertise in developing multiscale mathematical and computational models in the fields of evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, theoretical morphology, and cell development. During her graduate degree she developed a mathematical model that predicted both growth and form of sea urchin skeletons. After graduating she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, where she gained expertise in evolutionary game theory and developed various models that capture behaviors in complex social dilemmas such as Climate Change negotiations and Host parasite interactions. Currently she has applied her expertise to cell development and produced a 3D model that can explore and predict cell diversification in a developing tissue.
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