Biology Seminar - Alexander Aulehla

We wonder how collective rhythms and oscillatory signalling activities originate and function in developing embryos. What information do these rhythms encode and in particular, how are rhythms employed in organims to integrate their dynamically changing environment?

I will discuss recent findings using medaka rice fish (Oryzias latipes), which is an excellent model to study the effect of periodic temperatures cycles, to which embryos are exposed to in their natural habitat. Temperature variations occur at different time-scales, i.e. seasonal changes and day-night temperature cycles, and we study their respective impact on gastrulation and body axis segemntation and the segmentation clock. I will also discuss how we employ a physics-guided approach and use synchronisation theory and entrainment to control endogenous rhythms experimentally, to reveal their function and also their fundamental dynamical properties.