This event is also offered virtually. Please click here to join via Zoom.
 

“Mechanical Information Processing in Adherent Cells”

Margaret Gardel, Ph.D.
Horace B. Horton Professor, Physics and Molecular Engineering
Director, James Franck Institute
University of Chicago
 

ABSTRACT
My lab studies how the movement and shape of living cells is controlled by living materials constructed by protein assemblies within the cell interior.  In this talk, I will describe my lab’s recent efforts to understand the design principles of the active, soft materials that drive morphogenesis of epithelial tissue.  In particular, we are interested in the design principles by which the cellular cytoskeleton senses, generates, and adapts to mechanical force.  Here I will describe our current experimental to study the regulation of the shape and size of epithelial cells.  If time allows, I will discuss how physical constraints govern cell size regulation in epithelial tissue.
 

BIOGRAPHY
Margaret Gardel is the Horace B. Horton Professor of Physics and Molecular Engineering at University of Chicago. She is a member of the Institute for Biophysics Dynamics and currently serves as Director of the James Franck Institute. She joined the University of Chicago in 2007 after earning her Ph.D. from Harvard University with David Weitz and completing postdoctoral research as a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT and at Scripps Research Institute with Clare Waterman.  She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.  Her awards include a Packard Fellowship, Sloan Fellowship, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics.