Weekly Discussions

19 January 2010'

Why make something noisy? - The benefit of sampling - or maybe trying every ombination along a spectrum - a maze - Minesweeper? - except a wrong turn can't be completely detrimental to the whole system .... maybe though - aging / death discussion

Positive feedback loops --> bistable, bimodal phenotype - ex. S. cerevisiae with galactose (Acar paper) - have 2 positive, 1 negative - negative allows switching between states - perhaps the two states can be complementary to each other - random on/off transition - barcodes? decoding, decrypting - combination lock-ish - bacteria as a random number generator - stops when it fits the "slot"

Meeting with Dr. Campbell

- went through papers - positive feedback loops are important - Minesweeper --> maybe Battleship - the aging papers Dr. C sent - thinking can somehow randomly switch something on, if beneficial to survival @ that time, will select for those and kill the others - maybe some cell differentiation using +/- feedback - maybe some antenna-ish like sampling - a Biosensor - cell has lots of sensors, randomly sample for something, if detect something with one of the sensors then report...do something else while other cells can keep sensing