Abstract:
Cells are highly dynamic structures that are constantly converting chemical energy into mechanical work to pull and push on one another and on their surroundings. These pulls and pushes are mediated by tiny molecular forces at the scale of piconewtons. For context, 7 pN applied a distance of 1 nm is ~1 kcal/mol. Nonetheless, these forces can have profound biochemical consequences. For example, the rapidly fluctuating forces within embryos control development and the forces between immune cells and their targets can drastically tune immune response and function. Despite the importance of mechanics there are limited methods to study forces at the molecular scale and particularly within the context of living cells. In this talk, I will discuss my group's efforts at addressing this gap in knowledge by developing materials to measure and map the molecular forces applied by cells. I will describe the development of a suite of molecular DNA tension probes. DNA tension probes offer significant improvements in signal/noise and also lead to enhanced spatial and temporal resolution. I will describe recent advances to study forces at the single molecule scale and then I will also describe a series of force-triggered reactions that enable signal amplification and "-omics" applications. I will focus on the application of these probes in the study of platelet activation, and T cell receptor mechanobiology. Finally, armed with these new tools, I will describe the advent of translational mechanobiology where we predict the bleeding risk in patients by measuring the mechanical activity of their platelet adhesion receptors.
Host: Gaurav Arya
Event Series
DMI Seminar Series