Dr. Johannes Berg: "Statistical physics in quantitative biology: The regulation of gene expression"
Dr. Johannes Berg, Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Köln
Fluctuations in biological systems span a wide range; from the evolutionary timescales of population dynamics, to stochastic effects in biochemical processes. All these timescales enter the problem of when and where a gene is read out to produce RNA molecules and proteins. I will discuss several exemplary cases, from the generation of transcription factor binding sites in regulatory DNA to the outofequilibrium dynamics of gene expression levels.