Biophysical Modeling: Dynamics Inside Cells

The insides of cells are incredibly dynamic, in a state of nearly constant rearrangement.

Much of this motion is driven by tiny molecular motors — dyneins, kinesins, and myosins — pulling, pushing, or walking along complex scaffolds of flexible filaments and membranes. In so doing, they directly move cargoes through the cell, and indirectly drive cytoplasmic flows that help to transport, mix, and localize nutrients and proteins.

To understand such processes, our team develops and applies both discrete and continuum models, and develops software spanning relevant intracellular scales, from all-atom simulations of individual MTs (in collaboration with the Structural and Molecular Biophysics research team) to cell-spanning flows in massive oocytes. Our work has shown how geometry guides the positioning of centrosomes and the mitotic spindle across a huge range of cell sizes, and how microtubules spontaneously align to drive streaming flows and how those flows orient themselves within complex cell geometries.

Ongoing work aims to understand how chromosomes are moved from outside the spindle to the division plane, how complex features of streaming flows arise and alter intracellular transport, and how microtubule polarity is organized within nerve cells.