Presenter:
Dr. Jane Kondev, Ph.D.
HHMI Professor
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, Brandeis University
How Cells Measure Length
Dr. Gulliver noticed 140 years ago that the size of the cell's nucleus is proportional to the size of the cell. Similar observations have been made about other organelles and they raise a fascinating question: How does the cell establish a micron-scale ruler with nothing more at its disposal than nanometer-sized proteins that diffuse, on occasion bump into each other, and transiently stick together? In this talk, I will describe quantitative experiments and related theory that are beginning to reveal general principles of how cells control the size of their organelles. Most of the talk will focus on assembly of flagella in Giardia, and of actin cables in budding yeast, and how these experiments are revealing general principles of cellular length control.
Short bio:
Jane grew up in New York and Belgrade (former Yugoslavia). He did his doctoral work in theoretical physics at Cornell, and after research fellowships as Brown and Princeton, he settled down at Brandeis where he is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, a Professor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a Simons Investigator. His research focuses on cells and how processes inside cells, such as gene expression and cytoskeleton assembly, are controlled. He is the co-author of the book “Physical Biology of the Cell”.
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