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  Attention: Next/first official '''meeting Thursday'''(the first week)
  Attention: Next '''meeting Friday'''(the first week)
  at '''5:30''' p.m. in the '''cafeteria'''
  at '''what time?'''


People who showed their interest on Monday.
* [[Yixian Song]]
* [[Yixian Song]]
* [[Felix Hol]]
* [[Felix Hol]]
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* [[Ana Hocevar]]
* [[Ana Hocevar]]


For now just copied the text of the main project page, written by ([[Yixian Song]])
Bacteria "feed on" free strands of DNA in the environment. Some of the strands could be virulent,
yet there are also antibodies helping bacteria against the viruses.
Besides, some bacteria occupy a special F-plasmid, which allows the bacteria sending copies of its DNA strands to the others (including copies F-plasmids). Infected bacteria have certainly lower fitness, yet holding F-plasmids or antibodies is also costly. Fixing the population size/ number of bacteria, we could address the spread of viruses.


I've once read a paper of Redfield(1993) "Genes for Breakfast: The Have-Your-Cake and-Eat-lt-Too of Bacterial Transformation". Though it's an old publication, I still find the idea very inspiring. Well, considering bacteria living in a gene-pool with abandoned DNA strands, each bacterium can randomly "eat" free DNA strands, and use them as nutrition or for DNA repairing or even gene improvement. But the DNA strands were abandoned for a reason. Some of them can be virulent.(!!!) Besides bacteria can exchange DNA with each other, of course. We can define a population size of bacteria, amount of free DNA strands in gene-pool, percentage of virulent DNA and their virulence (impact on the bacteria fitness). We certainly can also consider the bacteria as a metapopulation.("A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level." - says wikipedia.org) The question to be answered will be "in which situation the bacterial population will become extinct in the end".
'''Implementation'''


* Cool topic! I'd be happy to brain storm a bit on this ([[Felix Hol]])
Initiation:
* So will I ([[Borys Wrobel]])
N bacteria are randomly signed by 3 independent properties a) with/without F-Plasmid b)infected by virus or not c)hold antibody or not.(Property b and c cannot both be positive at the same time.)
 
Interaction rules:
Only bacteria with F-Plasmid can transfer their positive properties(a and b or c) to another bacterium.
Infected bacteria can be cured by receiving antibodies. And bacteria holding antibodies cannot be infected.
 
...... (Details to be discussed)
 
Observation:
Dynamics of the fraction of infectious, immune bacteria and bacteria holding F-Plasmids. (Which kind of attractor can we expect?)

Latest revision as of 07:01, 11 June 2010

Attention: Next meeting Friday(the first week)
at what time?

Bacteria "feed on" free strands of DNA in the environment. Some of the strands could be virulent, yet there are also antibodies helping bacteria against the viruses. Besides, some bacteria occupy a special F-plasmid, which allows the bacteria sending copies of its DNA strands to the others (including copies F-plasmids). Infected bacteria have certainly lower fitness, yet holding F-plasmids or antibodies is also costly. Fixing the population size/ number of bacteria, we could address the spread of viruses.

Implementation

Initiation: N bacteria are randomly signed by 3 independent properties a) with/without F-Plasmid b)infected by virus or not c)hold antibody or not.(Property b and c cannot both be positive at the same time.)

Interaction rules: Only bacteria with F-Plasmid can transfer their positive properties(a and b or c) to another bacterium. Infected bacteria can be cured by receiving antibodies. And bacteria holding antibodies cannot be infected.

...... (Details to be discussed)

Observation: Dynamics of the fraction of infectious, immune bacteria and bacteria holding F-Plasmids. (Which kind of attractor can we expect?)

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