Life begins as a collection of cells, but the journey from that tiny grouping to a fully developed organism is complex and mysterious. Stanislav Shvartsman, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, brings an engineering perspective to studying mechanisms involved in tissue development and form. In one promising approach, Shvartsman’s lab is using mathematical modeling […]
Like a tree sprouting from an acorn, a lung grows from a small tube of cells into an array of branches and stems. But unlike trees, which assume a dizzying variety of shapes and sizes, the branched network of airways in the lung takes a single, predictable form in each species. Until recently, biologists believed […]
Marina Feric was stuck. It’s not an uncommon feeling for a research scientists working on a particularly difficult problem, but Feric, who was studying the internal structure of frog cells, worried that she was not moving forward. As part of her project, she had injected magnetic, micron-sized beads into the frog cells’ nuclei and made […]
Eric Wieschaus had a question. It was Friday afternoon, and Stephanie Weber was well into her presentation on cellular structure when Wieschaus, a molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, politely raised his hand and gave the talk a nudge in a different direction. “We’d been thinking about the problem from a physics perspective,” said Weber, a […]
Modern medicine, from cardiac surgery to chemotherapy, rests on a foundation of reliable antibiotics. But health authorities around the world warn that the effectiveness of antibiotics is under increasing threat from resistant bacteria. Mark Brynildsen, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, is seeking solutions to this problem through new ways to combat dangerous […]
Sometimes it’s useful to picture cells as microscopic machines with organelles such as the mitochondria and the Golgi apparatus serving as spinning cogs and gears. But the vision falls short when it comes to explaining how the internal structure of cells forms in the first place. For that, a better image might be a raindrop. […]