Current Research

Developing oscillating probes of cell condition

I research the bacterial proteins MinD and MinE from a synthetic biology angle. The MinDE reaction is an oscillating system – it creates stable waves within cells. The frequency and power of the waves is tunable on the level of gene expression, and the yeast is an ideal organism to create these controlled oscillations, due to the ease of genome engineering and endogenous perturbation. I plan on researching applications of this oscillation in the yeast model organism to create programmable cellular radios that can inform us about metabolism and viscosity on a single-cell level. This technology could address problems with existing technologies for single-cell event detection, and advance the field of yeast microscopy.