[MS05] Mathematical and biophysical modeling of collective cell migration, fate transition, and heterogeneity in development and diseases

[MS05-01] Revealing principles of cell fate decision: Landscape control and applications

*Chunhe Li¹ (1. Fudan University (China))

Keywords:

Gene regulatory networks

How cells perform their functions in biological systems is controlled by the corresponding gene regulatory networks. Studying the global properties of gene regulatory networks and revealing the mechanisms of cell fate decision is a challenging problem. In this presentation, I will introduce some methods we have recently developed, namely the theoretical framework of energy landscape and transition path methods, and a dimension reduction method for stochastic dynamical systems based on energy landscape theory. Attractors on the energy landscape characterize different cellular states. The barrier heights between stable attractors quantitatively describe the probabilities of transitions between different cell states. We have further developed a landscape control method that can identify optimized combinatorial gene targets to control cell fate. I will also discuss the applications of these methods in several specific biological systems, including cell cycle, cancer networks, and neural dynamics.