Thomas Pfeiffer
Contact
New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study
Personal Homepage
email: t.pfeiffer@massey.ac.nz
Education & Scientific Career
| 1999 |
Diploma in Biophysics, Humboldt University Berlin |
|---|---|
| 2000-2003 | PhD with Sebastian Bonhoeffer, Ecology & Evolution, ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| 2003-2005 | PostDoc Fellowship at ETH Zurich Computational Laboratory |
| 2005-2010 | Research Scientist @ PED, funded by Society in Science |
| 2010-2012 | Research Associate, Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences |
| 2012- | Professor for Computational Biology, NZIAS, Massey University |
Research interests
Evolution of scientific knowledge. Publications in scientific journals
contain a large fraction of scientific knowledge of mankind. The question
of how this knowledge is obtained and how it evolves over time has fascinated
philosophers - and a number of evolutionary biologists - for a long time.
Using information from publication databases I aim to understand how scientific
information is transferred from publication to publication and from researcher
to researcher; how researchers choose their research topics; and what factors
determine their success. Long-term perspective of my research project is
to test theories for the evolution of knowledge such as Richard Dawkins concept
of memes.
Reciprocal altruism and the use of social information. Reciprocal altruism
is a major explanation for the emergence of cooperation among unrelated individuals.
Cooperation may be beneficial if it is reciprocated by other individuals in
future interactions. In direct reciprocity, individuals reciprocate previous
cooperative interactions with the present partner. In indirect reciprocity,
cooperation may be reciprocated by individuals other than the present partner.
Using computer simulations, I am studying which type of information (observed
vs. experienced; individual-specific vs. unspecific) can be used by strategies
of reciprocal altruism.
Evolution of complex biochemical networks. Processes in living organisms are the result of interactions of biochemical compounds in highly complex networks. It is a major challenge in biology to understand the design and functioning of these networks. Since biochemical networks emerge as a result of Darwinian evolution it is a promising approach to study the impact of evolutionary processes on network design and functioning. In my research projects I am studying the consequences of tradeoffs between rate and yield of ATP-producing pathways, the emergence of crossfeeding in microbial populations, and the origin of "hub metabolites" in metabolic networks.
Selected publications
- Pfeiffer T, S Schuster, S Bonhoeffer (2001). Cooperation and competition in the evolution of ATP-producing pathways. Science 292: 504-507.
- Pfeiffer T, S Bonhoeffer (2003). An evolutionary scenario for the transition to undifferentiated multicellularity. P Natl Acad Sci USA 100: 1095-1098.
- Pfeiffer T, S Bonhoeffer (2004). Evolution of crossfeeding in microbial populations. Am Nat 163: E126-35.
- Pfeiffer T, S Schuster (2005). Game-theoretical approaches to studying the evolution of biochemical systems. Trends Biochem Sci 30: 20-25.
- Pfeiffer T, C Rutte, T Killingback, M Taborsky, S Bonhoeffer (2005). Evolution of cooperation by generalized reciprocity. P Roy Soc Lond B Bio 272: 1115-1120.
- Pfeiffer T, OS Soyer, S Bonhoeffer (2005). Evolution of connectivity in metabolic networks. PLoS Biol 3: e228