Joint Meeting of Asian Conference for Mathematical Biology and Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Mathematical Biology (ACMB-JSMB2025)

Chair:Gervy Marie Angeles(University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines), Antoine Diez(Kyoto University, Japan), Steffen Plunder(Kyoto University, Japan)

The life of cells and microorganisms, such as bacteria, is shaped by a complex interplay of internal mechanisms and environmental interactions, governing fundamental aspects such as movement and division and culminating in the formation of stable tissues or large colonies. Understanding and controlling these self-organizing phenomena are crucial, particularly in developmental biology and medicine. As key examples of movement and growth, this symposium will feature talks on wound healing, lamellipodium-driven cell migration, and the regulation of bacterial population size under antibiotic stress.
At the core of large-scale biological phenomena are intricate individual behaviors. In cell migration, the lamellipodium—a thin membrane protrusion relying on actin filament dynamics—plays a key role in crawling motility. The individual polarization of lamellipodia and cell-matrix adhesion is guided by environmental chemical signals that eventually lead to complex cell-cell interactions fundamental to multicellular dynamics. For bacteria, phenotypic heterogeneity in response to stress—such as variations in resistance or division—determines population-level survival, involving a complex trade-off between individual response and population growth.
The inherent heterogeneity of these systems presents both experimental challenges and rich opportunities for mathematical modeling. This symposium will thus explore a range of mathematical approaches—including dynamical systems with delays, stochastic methods, partial differential equations, and computational techniques—all aimed at bridging the gap between individual and population scales.