Research

Cell size and cell cycle control

How do microbes such as bacteria and yeast control their sizes and couple division, growth and DNA replication?

From single-cell variability to population growth

When is cell-to-cell variability beneficial at the population level and when is it detrimental? How do we infer population growth from single lineage information? These problems connect modern ideas in statistical physics to basic questions in biology.

Modeling gene expression

How are transcription and translation coupled to cell growth and division? Which processes contribute to the noise in the process, and how can we determine their relative importance from experimental data? What limits the stability of large regulatory networks?

Shape regulation in bacteria

Microbes such as the bacteria E. coli and B. subtilis succeed in growing to precise rod-shapes with a remarkably well controlled diameter - how is shape regulation achieved at the micron scale via the action of molecular machines at the nanometer scale?

Microbial evolution

How is microbial fitness connected to cellular traits? How do gene-gene interactions (epistasis) and clonal interference affect evolutionary dynamics?

Diffusive relays

Neutrophils - white blood cells that form our first line of defense - exhibit collective dynamics known as swarming to sites of injury and infection, through which an adequate level of neutrophils are rapidly recruited to the desired location. How can this be achieved using signals carried by diffusion alone?