In order to survive and effectively navigate an ever-changing and unpredictable environment, organisms must readily adapt their behavior to seek out needed resources, while simultaneously avoiding life-threatening
situations. These opposing processes are controlled by neural circuitry that is readily engaged by both environmental and physiological factors to promote behavioral output.
Friday November 4th
Abstract: We seek to create self-assembled biomolecular liquid droplets that act as rough mimics of biological condensates, and to engineer mesoscopic structure and function into the droplets through molecular design. We particularly form liquids from DNA nanostars, multi-armed DNA particles that condense through base-pairing interactions. These liquids show material properties similar to biological condensates, while also displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the number of arms of the constituent particles.
We study how animals sense the world around and within them. In particular, we focus on how insects sense temperature and humidity, and how the detection of these stimuli drives their behavior and alters their physiology. The seminar will examine the current understanding of how thermo- and hygro-sensory input is detected at the molecular and cell biological levels and how neural circuits process this sensory input.
Title: Dynamic Algorithmic Networks of Visual Categorization
Abstract:* Thermosensation is a critical sensory modality for all organisms. C. elegans exhibits the remarkable ability to detect temperature changes of as little as 0.01°C
Abstract: Sensory prediction is thought to be vital to organisms, but few studies have tested how well organisms and parts of organisms efficiently predict their sensory input in an information-theoretic sense. In this talk, we report results on how well cultured neurons ("brain in a dish") and humans efficiently predict artificial stimuli. We find that both are efficient predictors of their artificial input.
DNA methylation is a critical regulatory mechanism underlying human brain development, learning, memory, and disease. In particular, the importance of cell-type specific epigenetic variation of non-coding regions in neuropsychiatric disorders, which are considered human-specific, is increasingly appreciated. We investigated evolutionary
*Abstract:* Many of our behaviors are intrinsically motivated by a need to maintain homeostasis, including that of body temperature, energy, and fluid levels. Despite their importance, numerous seemingly simple questions remain unresolved in this field. My presentation will focus on our ongoing efforts to address two of these issues in mouse models.
