January 20, 2025. Dr. Eran Agmon, in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Cell Science, published a manuscript in the journal microPublication on “Comparing simulations of actin filament compression reveals tradeoff between computational cost and capturing supertwist”.

December 14-18, 2024. CCAM faculty attended the American Society of Cell Biology Annual Meeting 2024 in San Diego. Michael Blinov and Margaret Johnson (John Hopkins University) led the session on Biophysical Modeling of the Cell on December 14th. On December 15th, Leslie Loew, Ann Cowan, Stephan Hoops (U Virginia) taught COPASI and VCell tutorials during the workshop on
Mathematical Modeling for Cell Biology.

November 11, 2024. Dr. Eran Agmon, in collaboration with Liam Longo (Tokyo Institute of Technology) and Hiroki Kojima (University of Tokyo), has secured a grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a pioneering study on microbial community formation. The project, A-Life Meets B-Life, will leverage simulations (A-Life, or Artificial Life) and E. coli bioreactor experiments (B-Life, or Biological Life) to examine how microbial communities form and assemble under controlled, hybrid conditions. This research aims to reveal insights into microbial cooperation and community dynamics, with a focus on understanding how interactions within these communities may influence individuality and adaptability.

October 22, 2024. Dr. Abhijit Deb Roy gave a seminar titled “Deciphering the tubulin code of mechanobiology” to the Molecular and Cell Biology Department at UConn Storrs.

https://events.uconn.edu/molecular-and-cell-biology/event/274328-mcb-seminar-series-abhijit-deb-roy

October 17, 2024. Dr. Eran Agmon recently shared his insights at a John Templeton-funded workshop on Goal-Directed Systems in Bilbao, Spain. His talk, titled A Compositional Framework for Modeling Biological Agents, introduced a new approach to systems biology, advocating for modular, compositional models that better reflect the natural organization of biological systems. Dr. Agmon discussed how traditional simulations, often rigid and monolithic, fall short of capturing the dynamic interactions between subsystems that define real-life biological agents. In the compositional framework, interfaces and interconnections among subsystems play a crucial role, enabling multiscale simulations that span molecular to organismal levels.