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2021.10.08 M Levin MaRMN and Division of CMB&RM Author: Neil Roberts Added on Mon Oct 11 22:03:00 BST 2021 Duration: 1:12:00 Distinguished Professor Michael Levin from Tufts Univeristy, USA, shares his work on “Endogenous bioelectric circuits regulate embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer: from basic mechanisms to electroceuticals”. Birth defects, traumatic injury, and carcinogenic departures from normal morphogenesis - all of these problems could be solved if we gained rational control over the large-scale structures that cells build. The future of regenerative medicine depends on mastering not only the mechanisms necessary for cells to cooperate toward specific anatomical outcomes, but also the algorithms that are sufficient for cellular collectives to solve problems in morphospace. Our lab has identified bioelectric networks (in all cells, not just neurons) as a powerful computational medium that regulates gene expression, cell behavior, and anatomical outcomes. By developing tools to read and write patterns of resting potentials in tissues, we have begun to identify triggers of complex patterning subroutines that create entire organs (such as eyes), trigger regenerative repair (of limbs and spinal cords), and normalize cancer. In this talk, I will first describe important gaps in fundamental knowledge that remain despite progress in molecular genetics and stem cell biology. I will then introduce the tools and main ideas of developmental bioelectricity, and discuss recent results that enable computational modeling of bioelectrically-mediated dynamics to lead to discovery of effective therapeutic agents (blends of ion channel-targeting drugs). I will conclude with a vision of a possible future in which regenerative medicine is strongly advanced by ideas from cognitive science and computer science that complement the hardware-level rewiring of pathways with development of strategies to manipulate the collective intelligence of cellular swarms.  

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