Postdoc work
I am an experimental physicist and biophysicist. Since starting my postdoc, I have focused on understanding the physical and mechanical principles underlying the assembly and operation of the meiotic spindle in mammalian oocytes (immature egg cells). The spindle is the self-organized cellular machine that is responsible for segregating chromosomes – an essential part of the process of gamete creation. As well as being a biological process, chromosome segregation is a physical one: the spindle must correctly attach to chromosomes and create enough force to move these micron-sized objects over distances of tens of microns. Yet, the principles of assembly and operation of the spindle – and of large, energy-consuming organelles in general – remain poorly understood. To answer some of these questions, I use a variety of tools from soft matter physics, molecular biology, and reproductive biology: quantitative microscopy, materials-physics-style modeling, micro-manipulation, and live-cell imaging.
Charged particles on spherical droplets (3D rendering of confocal micrograph) In the image on the left, the white dots are fluorescent PMMA particles, which bind to the interior surface of a spherical oil droplet. At low density, the system appears disordered (left droplet). However, as the spacing between the particles is reduced, the system becomes more ordered (right droplet). How can we describe this apparent phase behavior?
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