"Uncovering scaling laws to infer multi-drug response of resistant microbes and cancer cells"
Lunch @ 11:45

Lunch @ 11:45, talk @ 12-1:00

Lunch @ 11:45, talk @ 12-1:00

Lunch @ 11:45, talk @ 12-1:00

The protein content of a cell is a primary determinant of its phenotype. Yet, large fluctuations in protein numbers are observed among genetically identical cells grown under identical conditions. Recently, cellular protein variability has been a hot topic of research, with microorganisms providing a popular model system. Despite much work and…

Lunch @ 11:45, talk @ 12-1:00

At a time when microbial ecology is largely traveling along genomic roads, we cannot forget that the functions and services of microbes depend greatly on their behaviors, encounters, and interactions with their environment. New technologies, including microfluidics and high-speed video microscopy, provide a powerful opportunity to spy on the…

Einstein argued in 1905 that the mean squared displacement of a microscopic particle suspended in a fluid at rest is proportional to time with the constant of proportionality giving the particle's diffusion coefficient. Since then, diffusion coefficients have been determined from particle trajectories by fitting a straight line to the observed…

Observing cellular responses to perturbations is central to generating and testing hypothesis in biology. Time-lapse microscopy is a powerful tool for studying cellular phenotypes, but has been refractory to proteome-wide investigations. We developed a live-cell microarray integrated with a massively parallel microchemostat array to quantify…

Recent experiments on confluent layers of epithelial cells and vibrated granular media have motivated interest in the behavior of active systems at high density, where the interplay of steric repulsion and activity can yield active glassy or jammed states. In this talk I will discuss the behavior of dense collections of self-propelled particles…

The colloquium will discuss the ways that cells inscribe information onto and into their genomes at different time scales. These range from individual cell cycles to evolutionary time. The main emphasis will be on genomic inscriptions at the DNA level. Contrary to popular impressions, DNA inscriptions are active, non-random processes mediated by…

We are exploring an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for the localization and regulation of biochemistry at strained membranes in bacteria and mitochondria. In this talk, I highlight this mechanism by discussing the regulation of the universal and widely conserved DNA-repair protein, RecA. An emerging picture of bacterial organization is that…

Bacterial cells have rigid walls, which define their shape, and enable them to hold high internal pressure. While much is known about cell wall chemistry, the mechanisms controlling its growth remain elusive. The processes leading to the cylindrical shape of many bacteria are only now being unraveled. Recent experiments discovered that new cell…

“Epistasis and adaptation in yeast” Populations adapt when they encounter new environments, but our ability to predict the course and rate of adaptation are quite limited. A major complication is that we do not know how one mutation might influence the fitness effects of other mutations. In other words, we do not know the structure of…

"Dynamical entropy production in recurrent neuronal circuits" Neurons in the cerebral cortex fire action potentials in highly irregular, seemingly random sequences. Since neurons in isolation reliably respond to the repeated injection of identical temporally varying inputs, irregular activity in the cortex is not believed to result from a…

Using order parameters to disentangle biological networks that control decisions Abstract: How do biological networks process information to make decisions? What are the key circuit elements that control these decisions? Can we identify and manipulate these circuits to control the choices cells and organisms make? In this talk, I'll discuss…

Mechanisms of long distance cell migration. Migratory cells travel through many different microenvironments to pattern structures in the vertebrate embryo. One example is the neural crest, a multipotent, highly migratory cell population that travels long distances to contribute to head, heart, and trunk development. Cell lineage tracing has…