Mathematical Biology Seminar Fred Adler, University of Utah Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018 3:05pm in LCB 225 Modeling mutualisms in plants and cancer Abstract: Essentially every ecological interaction has a combination of positive and negative aspects, but capturing that in models proves surprisingly difficult. I will discuss two models of so-called mutualisms. Using the first, a resource-mediated interaction of plants with their soil microbiome, we'll look at whether mutualisms buffer the system against environmental perturbations. With the second, a model of how cancer cells coopt the behavior of promoters of cell growth, we'll try to understand why cancer is rare but possible.