Nishanth Chavourkar Rose Hills
Quantifying cellular input-output functions in Drosophila Melanogaster
How do cells in a developing embryo robustly decode which genes to activate or silence from noisy molecular inputs? The aim of this project is to quantify the effect of these cellular input signals (transcription factors) on the transcription of developmental genes in the Drosophila (fruit fly) embryo. Even though transcription has been studied in cultured cells, our understanding of how this intricate process unfolds in a living animal undergoing development is limited. Furthermore, we aim to characterize transcriptional activity through an analysis of RNA polymerase loading rate as opposed to the current form of analysis of net mRNA production. Concurrently, we will make use of statistical mechanics and information theory to determine an approximate time scale on which our input signals regulate our transcriptional output, allowing us to gain further insight into the effects of activator binding on the dynamics of regulatory DNA. Through this analysis we hope to be able to extract more information regarding the dynamics of regulatory DNA as a result of cellular input signals.
Message To Sponsor
Thank you very much for your support of my research this summer. I am looking forward to further exploring the intersection between physics and biology, and using theoretical tools to further our understanding of regulatory mechanisms within transcription. Thank you for making this possible!