Information Processing in Living Cells: Beyond First Approximations Ido Golding, Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In my lab, we attempt to better understand the way a cell represents information about the environment through the activity of its genes. To achieve this aim, one has to reexamine "first approximations" currently used when quantifying cellular information processing: (1) the description of cellular response in term in terms of a single "transcription rate" rather than in terms of discrete events; (2) the treatment cellular reactions as governed by diffusion and occurring in a "well-mixed" cell. We use E. coli as a model system and study gene activity at the resolution of individual events in space and time, thus going beyond these first approximations.