Talks

It is well established that chromosome territories are non-randomly organized in the interphase nucleus, with gene poor chromosome territories proximal to the nuclear periphery, while gene rich chromosome territories are closer to the nuclear center. Such an organization is conserved in evolution. We showed that the depletion of the nuclear envelope proteins i.e, lamins, not only induces chromosomal instability but also destabilizes chromosome positioning in otherwise diploid colorectal cancer cells. Remarkably, the combined loss of lamins and Emerin perturb chromosome territory and gene loci dynamics in the interphase nucleus. Furthermore, nuclear envelope proteins are essential for relaying mechanical signals into the nucleus, since cells cultured on softer substrates showed a striking change in the spatial organization of chromosome territories in an Emerin-Lamin dependent manner. Taken together, our studies reveal an overarching role for nuclear envelope proteins, in the maintenanc...

3D organization of eukaryotic genomes scales from nucleosomes to loops, chromatin domains and chromosome territories. Given the hierarchical nature of this organization we explored the dependence of higher order genome organization on nucleosome positioning across the genome. I will discuss the mechanism by which ATP-dependent chromatin remodeller, ISWI slides nucleosomes to position them regularly and what are the consequences of perturbing nucleosome positioning across the genome on higher order genome organization.

Causal reasoning is vital for effective reasoning in many domains, from healthcare to economics. In medical diagnosis, for example, a doctor aims to explain a patient’s symptoms by determining the diseases causing them. This is because causal relations, unlike correlations, allow one to reason about the consequences of possible treatments and to answer counterfactual queries. In this talk I will present some recent work done with my collaborators about how one can learn and reason with counterfactual distributions, and why this is importantly for decision making. In all cases I will strive to motivate and contextualise the results with real word examples.

It is not explicitly obvious that relativity and quantum mechanics are consistent with each other. Extensive research has shown that quantum states are consistent with relativity, in that they do not allow for faster-than-light transferring of information. In contrast, much less research has been done in quantum measurements, and in fact, naive attempts to put together relativity and quantum measurements lead to signaling between space-like separated regions. In this talk I will describe how this same problem arises in non-relativistic quantum physics, where measurements on systems kept spatially separated in general lead to signalling. By giving away the projection postulate, it is possible to alleviate this problem and measure non-local variables without signaling by exploiting pre-shared entanglement as a resource. I will describe a protocol for implementing any joint measurement in a non-signaling manner, and argue that this leads to a complete classification of all joint quantum measurements, based on the required amount of entanglement necessary to measure them.