Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 40: Systems Biology, Evolution and Neural Networks II
BP 40.8: Talk
Friday, March 20, 2020, 11:45–12:00, ZEU 250
Mitochondrial dynamics facilitates precise sensing of metabolic states — •Felix Jonathan Meigel1, Philipp Mergenthaler2, and Steffen Rulands1,3 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany — 2Charite - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Department of Experimental Neurology, Berlin, Germany — 3Center for Systems Biology Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Cellular behaviour relies on robustly sensing and reacting to fluctuating environmental signals. In recent years, cellular organelles such as mitochondria were recognized as signaling hubs on which different environmental cues are integrated. While the formation of dynamic protein complexes on the outer mitochondrial membrane triggers cell death, the reversible aggregation of these complexes is embedded into a fusion and fission dynamics of the mitochondria themselves. Here, giving the example of the metabolic regulation cell death, we show how the interplay of mitochondrial and protein dynamics facilitates sensitive and specific sensing of fluctuating metabolite levels. By identifying collective degrees of freedom that resemble localised modes in Josephson junction arrays, we demonstrate that such multiscale dynamics form a kinetic low-pass filter that is able to distinguish between fluctuations and biologically informative signals. Our work shows paradigmatically how biological function relies on the integration of non-equilibrium processes on different spatial scales.