Publications

PhD Thesis: Mathematical modelling of cellular and evolutionary processes in changing environments. Bergen Open Research Archive. Defense slides. Defense committee. Press release in Norwegian.

Optimal organelle inheritance strategies under different changing environments and mutational pressures. Preprint.

Using stochastic modelling and evolutionary algorithms, we explore which organelle DNA inheritance strategies (like strict maternal inheritance, paternal leakage, doubly uniparental inheritance, bottleneck sizes and templated repair) are most favourable for an evolving population under different dynamic environments and levels of selection. We find optimal balances in mitigating mutational damage and in creating and maintaining diversity of gene types that allow adaptation to an environmental change.

Belén García Pascual, Lars M. Salbu, Jessica Renz, Konstantinos Giannakis, Iain G. Johnston. 2024. Comparing structure and dynamics of transition graphs by the symmetric difference metric over an edge-filtration. IEEE Access.

Method Weight-Filtration Comparison Curve (WFCC) to compare weighted graphs with equal underlying structure, by using a filtration on the edge sets and counting at each filtration value the edges that are in one graph but not in the other. We apply the method to hypercubic Markov transition graphs that are evolutionary models of antimicrobial resistance.

Kathrin Garschall, Belén García-Pascual, Eudald Pascual-Carreras, Daria Filimonova, Annika Guse, Iain G. Johnston, Patrick R.H. Steinmetz. 2024.

The cellular basis of feeding-dependent body size plasticity in sea anemones. Development.

Collaborative project with marine biologists (Sars Centre) analysing body size, cell size and cell number data in sea anemones during feeding and starvation periods to statistically model how these animals grow and shrink. Multi-phased, time change-point, piecewise linear models were developed using optimisation methods of their log likelihood function to capture the different growth and shrinkage dynamics over a time interval.

Cellular and environmental dynamics influence species-specific extents of organelle gene retention. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Biomathematics work where we develop a theoretical model of coupled differential equations to test the hypothesis that the magnitude and variability of energetic environmental demands shape organelle genomes. The model predicts that species in environments with high-amplitude, intermediate-frequency oscillations will retain the most organelle genes, whereas those in less dynamic or noisy environments, will retain the fewest genes. We also show that these results are compatible with the biological data.

Determining homology of an unknown space from a sample. European Journal of Mathematics.

Topological data analysis work for finding the homology (and underlying geometry) of an unknown space from just an intrinsic simplicial complex constructed from a sample of known points in the space. The methods are based on filtrations and interleavings of generalised Čech complexes.

Others

Belén García Pascual. 2020. Geometric reconstruction and persistence methods. Bergen Open Research Archive.

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