Perfect Adaptation in Biological Networks

Date

May 18, 2026

Time

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Speaker

Prof Mustafa Khammash

Affiliation

ETH Zürich

Series

MPI-PKS Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Description

A distinctive feature of many biological systems is their ability to adapt to persistent stimuli or disturbances that would otherwise drive them away from a desirable steady state. This resulting stasis enables reliable function across a wide range of external environments. We focus on a stringent form of this behavior—robust perfect adaptation (RPA)—which remains resilient to certain network and parameter perturbations. As in engineered control systems, RPA is not incidental: it requires the regulating network to satisfy specific, unavoidable structural constraints. Using examples from systems biology and synthetic biology, we show how these constraints arise in natural and engineered circuits. We argue that identifying the structural basis of RPA allows us to move beyond implementation details and provides a principled lens for understanding regulatory complexity and information processing in biological systems

Last modified: Mar 8, 2026, 7:39:39 AM