Understanding Biological Clocks Using Methods from Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
- Date
- April 16 (Thu) 12:30 - 13:30, 2026 (JST)
- Speaker
-
- Gen Kurosawa (Senior Research Scientist, Division of Fundamental Mathematical Science, RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS))
- Venue
- via Zoom
- Seminar Room #359
- Language
- English
- Host
- Gen Kurosawa
Imagine that you are in a room with no information about time. The room is located in a cave, where temperature and light intensity remain constant. In such an environment, would you be able to wake up tomorrow or the day after?
In fact, most humans can wake up at roughly similar times on successive days. This is because we possess internal daily rhythms, known as circadian rhythms. Biological experiments have shown that such rhythms are not unique to humans, but are shared by many species on Earth.
In this talk, I will introduce some open problems related to these daily rhythms, and discuss approaches based on dynamical systems theory and the renormalization group method, from the perspectives of applied mathematics and theoretical physics.
Reference
- Shingo Gibo, Teiji Kunihiro, Tetsuo Hatsuda, Gen Kurosawa, Waveform distortion for temperature compensation and synchronization in circadian rhythms: An approach based on the renormalization group method, PLOS Computational Biology (2025), doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013246
This is a closed event for scientists. Non-scientists are not allowed to attend. If you are not a member or related person and would like to attend, please contact us using the inquiry form. Please note that the event organizer or speaker must authorize your request to attend.