Research Interests

Our lab is interested in the molecular basis of subcellular organization. How are proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids deployed within a cell to coordinate essential functions? We are focusing our attention on the cell biology of bacteria, whose awesome experimental power allows us to attack questions with an integrated combination of genetics, biochemistry, microscopy, genomics, pharmacology, and computation (the last with our friends and neighbors in Professor Ned Wingreen’s theory group).

Specifically, our lab is currently focusing on two main topics:

Cytoskeletal function

How does the newly-discovered bacterial cytoskeleton execute its many cellular functions?

Functional genomics

How can protein localization be integrated with other information to achieve a global, systems-level understanding of cell biology?

Cytoskeletal Function

Our interest in the cytoskeleton is centered on the bacterial actin homolog, MreB. We and others have shown that MreB is an essential integrator of spatial information that regulates cell shape, cell polarity, and chromosome segregation. But how does MreB actually carry out these functions? To this end, we are studying the dynamics of MreB filaments and the MreB-interactors that regulate and execute MreB function. We are also examining the specific mechanisms by which these proteins affect cellular polarization, morphogenesis, and chromosome dynamics.

Functional Genomics

To probe protein function globally, we are constructing and utilizing a modular whole-genome library for investigating multiple protein properties in Caulobacter crescentus, the preeminent bacterial model for studying spatial and temporal protein dynamics. We are initially focusing on the global analysis of protein localization, which has never been examined in bacteria. In addition to enhancing our understanding of many interesting individual proteins, these genome-wide data are being integrated with other information to achieve a systems-level perspective on the network that carries out cellular processes in multiple dimensions.