Mandatory for 298 Grad Seminar students who have been a TA for less than 2 quarters at UCI

What happens when we decrease the length of a closed curve in
the plane as fast as possible? This seemingly simple question has a very
nice answer which involves a beautiful combination of partial differential
equations and planar geometry. Come and get a glimpse of the amazing
subject of geometric flows!

A key phenomenon in the study of cell-to-cell communication and
protein regulation is the all-or-none, ultrasensitive dose response, which
transforms a continuous input into a digital output. Multisite systems are
often used in conjunction with allosteric effects to create such a behavior.
In this talk I describe a non-allosteric mechanism for a multisite system to
present strongly ultrasensitive behavior. Applications are given to protein
activation through multisite phosphorylation, clusters of receptors and DNA
regulation through histone modifications.