Clocks and Rulers in Life

Life is dynamics. Living beings are out of equilibrium systems constantly changing. We can observe the dynamical nature of life in the beating of a heart, the propagation of a nervous impulse, or the flowering of a plant. Our lab is specially interested in dynamics that show regularities: oscillations when the regularity is in time (clocks); pattern formation when the regularity is in space (rulers). A paramount stage of life in which the understanding of these dynamics is of capital importance is embryonic development: from conception to reaching a mature form, embryos are constantly growing and reshaping, forming new cell types and organs defined by biological clocks and rulers. We work in collaboration with experimentalists to build theories of these spatiotemporal phenomena, using ideas from physics and mathematics to build models and computer simulations that help us understand the nature of the interactions underlying the dynamics of life.