Seminar “Predicting evolution: statmech and biophysics far from equilibrium”
Date
Monday, 9 May 2016
Time
12:00 am
Place
University of Barcelona
Faculty of Physics Building
Room 3.20, 3rd floor
Speaker
Dr Michael Lässig, University of Cologne (Germany)
Abstract
The human flu virus undergoes rapid evolution, which is driven by interactions with its host immune system. We describe the evolutionary dynamics by a fitness model based on two biophysical phenotypes of the virus: protein folding stability and susceptibility to human immune response. This model successfully predicts the evolution of influenza one year into the future, which has important consequences for public health: evolutionary predictions can inform the selection of influenza vaccine strains. Based on this example, we discuss the important roles of (non-equilibrium) statistical mechanics and biophysics for evolution.
