Friday Oct. 15

Sergei Pilyugin, Department of Mathematics,
University of Florida



Title:    Modeling microbial growth from physiological viewpoint.

Abstract: The dynamics of microbial growth is a problem of
	  fundamental interest in microbiology, microbial
	  ecology, and biotechnology. The pioneering work of
	  Jacob Monod served as a starting point for developing
	  a wealth of phenomenological mathematical models that
	  aimed to explain various experimental findings over the
	  last half-century.

	  Most phenomenological models are quite successful in
	  capturing the steady state behavior of pure and mixed
	  microbial cultures, but fall short of explaining most
	  of the complex dynamic phenomena resulting from various
	  environmental perturbations.

	  In this talk, I will provide an overview of the experimental
	  data and introduce a different class of mathematical models
	  that can be used to understand the more complex dynamic
	  phenomena observed in microbial cultures. These models
	  explicitly include the physiological variables responsible
	  for dynamic adaptation of microbial cultures to the variations
	  in the environment.

	  I will present some analytical results and numerical simulations
	  and discuss some open mathematical questions. These results were
	  obtained in collaboration with Atul Narang (University of Florida)
	  and several students in his laboratory.