Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 18: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems II (Joint Session DY/BP)

BP 18.7: Talk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 15:30–15:45, ZEU 118

Phenotypic switching as a strategy for persistence in stochastic environments — •Peter Hufton, Yen Ting Lin, and Tobias Galla — School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Bet-hedging constitutes a strategy for life to survive in demanding, fluctuating environments. The ideal example is found in bacterial populations: switching stochastically between phenotypes conveys a fitness advantage when exposed to episodes of antibiotics. But what does the optimum switching strategy look like when, as in nature, the environment is itself unpredictable? Here, we present a theoretical study of the dynamics of growing populations subject to stochastic environmental switching, and provide a general framework for the analytic study of the fitness of such populations. Our original approach utilises the piecewise-deterministic Markov process, a technique which has seen increasing use in modelling biochemical process. Our results reveal significantly different behaviours to those found in periodic environmental conditions. We report that stochastic environments produce globally fitter populations, and that the optimum switching regimes in each case are markedly different.