Next week's seminars:

- Tue Feb 10 (room reservation 14:00 JST [=UTC+09:00]), ELSI-1 205 Seminar Room A
  [Seminar] Archishman Raju Seminar (Host: Hatakeyama)

  A Theoretical Perspective on Waddington's Genetic Assimilation Experiments
  Abstract:
  Genetic assimilation is the process by which a phenotype that is initially induced by an environmental stimulus becomes stably inherited in the absence of the stimulus after a few generations of selection. While the concept has attracted much debate  after being introduced by C. H. Waddington seventy years ago, there have been few experiments to quantitatively characterize the phenomenon. Here, we revisit and organize the results of Waddington's original experiments and follow-up studies that attempted to replicate his results. We describe the importance of phenocopies, or phenotypes obtained by environmental perturbations that are similar to mutants. We present theoretical models to understand phenocopies and the process of genetic assimilation. We highlight several aspects that we think require further quantitative studies, including the gradual increase of penetrance, the statistics of delay in assimilation, and the frequency of unviability during selection. Our results provide theoretical insight into the concepts of canalization, phenotypic plasticity, and genetic assimilation.

- Fri Feb 13 (room reservation 14:00 JST [=UTC+09:00]), ELSI-1 207 Seminar Room B
  [Study Group] Metabolism Hour