In vivo, the human genome folds into a characteristic ensemble of 3D structures. The mechanism driving the folding process remains unknown. A theoretical model for chromatin (minimal chromatin model) that explains the folding of interphase chromosomes and generates chromosome conformations consistent with experimental data will be presented…
Toward circuits optogenetics
Since the discovery of Channelrhodopsin and the first demonstration of photo-evoked action potentials in mammalian cells, optogenetics is progressively revolutionizing neuroscience research, opening perspectives both in fundamental and in medical research still unimaginable until few years…
Pattern formation and self-organization in biological flows
Complex life above a certain size would not be possible without a circulatory system. Both plants and animals have developed vascular systems of striking complexity to solve the problem of nutrient delivery, waste removal, and…
Seeking Intersections of Mechanics and (Molecular) Biology
I will survey some of the research of my group in areas that sit at the intersection of mechanics and biology. First, I will offer some perspective of how classical physics, and in particular both fluid mechanics and elasticity, as they are considered in…
Inference of effective networks from neural data to better understand spatial navigation
As an animal moves in space and receives external sensory inputs, it must dynamically maintain the representations of its position and environment at all times. How the hippocampus, a…
Applying Swarm Engineering to Control Collective Cell Dynamics
Multicellular life is driven by collective cell migration spanning morphogenesis, growth, wound healing, and even cancer invasion. Our group seeks to better understand such collective behaviors in living tissues in order that we can learn to control them, much as a…
The neural circuit basis of behavioral individuality
What do guitar strings and balloons have in common with biological networks and tissues?
Both guitar strings and balloons are floppy unless rigidified by geometrically induced self-stresses. Similar kinds of rigidity transitions have recently been described in biopolymer networks and models for biological tissues. Here, we propose a…
Metabolic rules of microbial community assembly
Microbes form complex multi-species communities that play important roles across the biosphere. Metabolism is a major determinant of microbial community assembly, but a quantitative and predictive connection between nutrient composition and microbiome…
Emergent Simplicity and Multiscale Mechanisms of Agile Animal Movement
The ability to move is a trait of all animals. Yet how do animals, including ourselves, get around in this complex and uncertain world with an ease and agility we find hard to recreate in engineered systems? Using an organismal physics…
Shared properties of the fly olfactory system and the monkey human face patch neurons
Perhaps unexpectedly, two quite different types of brain systems – the fruit fly olfactory system and the monkey inferotemporal face patches responding to human faces – share a number of…
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Please join us at 12 noon for lunch, seminar from 12:15-1:15.
Underneath the fascinating biology, evolution is governed by a stochastic dynamical process, which describes how mutations arise and spread through a population. Though the basic rules of this process are simple, it is often surprisingly difficult to predict how…
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