Dynamics fuel life
At planetary or atomic scales, movement dictates fate. Because physical forces are required to produce movement, this means that physical forces rule our life. It is currently unknown what different roles physical force play in biology, but recent research is starting to unravel the mysteries.
Eukaryotic cells can sense the physical environment using various sensory systems. These physical interactions transmit stimuli via mechanosensitive pathways, which can cause a cellular response. The effect of physical signals converting to chemical ones is profound. Eukaryotic stem cells demonstrate this principle powerfully during cell lineage differentiation (Le, et al., Nature Cell Biology, 864–875 (2016)). When stem cells differentiate the physical features of the extracellular matrices will dictate their fate. If the matrix is rigid, cells will produce rigid-like cells similar to bone. If the matrix is soft, cells will produce soft cells, like adipose. Essentially, stem cells will respond to physical stimuli without the assistance of a chemical cue (Engler A.J et al., Cell, 677-689 (2006)).
From my PhD work in bacterial biofilm development, I believe that bacterial cells also sense physical stimuli. Our lab, the mechano-micro-biology lab, studies the force-bearing extracellular appendage, type IV pilus, in Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The type IV pilus plays many roles in the bacteria’s life like DNA uptake, adhesion, and motility. We provide evidence that type IV pilus has an additional role in regulating spatiotemporal gene expression in the bacterial biofilm pre-cursor aggregate. You can find my paper on this by clicking here
As a creative person, I thrive on multidisciplinary approaches to problem-solving. As a biologist, it is vital to use a diverse set of tools to understand complex problems. Therefore, I have prioritized learning a wide range of techniques such as molecular cloning for synthetic biology, metabolic probes, quantitative imaging (epifluorescence, confocal, 2-photon) and analysis (FIJI, MATLAB), fluorescent in-situ hybridization, microfluidics, bioinformatics, RNA-seq and more.
If you wish to collaborate and/or chat about my work, please contact me at kelly@mechano-micro-biology.org
