Physical Society Colloquium

Physics of cellular decision

Paul François

Department of Physics
McGill University

Subcellular dynamics emerge from the interactions of molecules of many different types, and it seems a priori hopeless to build predictive theories, similar to what is done in physics. In this talk, I will use the example of early immune detection to illustrate how approaches inspired by physics (from phenomenology to coarse graining) allow us to untangle the biological interaction “hairball”. This led us to the discovery of the so-called “adaptive sorting” principle, and to the experimental validation of some of its most counterintuitive aspects (in collaboration with Grégoire Altan-Bonnet, NIH).