Julian Fox (Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, MSU)

9/29/2022  3:10pm

Abstract:

The regulatory mechanisms driving progression of the yeast cell cycle include the activity of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) with a pulse-generating transcription factor (TF) network. The coupling between the CDKs and the TF network has been hypothesized but is not fully confirmed. In this talk, we will discuss the idea of applying a systems biology approach to investigating a simplified hypothetical model that contains key elements of Yeast cell cycle regulation and progression. The network model contains a small pulse-generating TF network coupled to a single CDK regulator and is evaluated using an asynchronous multi-level Boolean approach. This investigation relies on a computational tool called Dynamic Signatures Generated by Regulatory Networks (DSGRN); thus, we will give an overview of how this tool works. Then we will discuss how this tool was used to investigate the simplified network model and discuss the results that show that the network model, despite its simplicity, can exhibit dynamical behavior similar to biological datasets in most cases, and where it does not, we provide hypotheses for missing key players.