The membrane systems, composed of lipid bilayers, membrane proteins and the surrounding cortex, form the fundamental structures to compartment a cell and its organelles. It is becoming increasingly clear that the membrane-based reactions are not only affected by chemical modifications, such as protein phosphorylation, but also involve crucial physical aspects such as spatial organization, mechano-transduction, phase separation, curvature-sensing, and confinement. All together they contribute to the accurate modulation of cellular functions including signaling transduction on plasma membranes, membrane trafficking in organelle vesicles, and gene transcription near nuclear envelopes. A key question in these systems is how the physical-chemical elements are integrated precisely in mesoscale (10nm-1µm), the scale at which molecules transiently associate with each other to exert a defined function.

In the Physical-Chemical Cell Signaling Lab, we aim to develop sophisticated synthetic chemical-biology tools, and high-resolution imaging methods, to solve challenging problems in the understanding of physical-chemical mechanisms of membrane adhesion and signaling. Specifically, we are interested in applying synthetic cell membranes, single molecule tracking, superresolution imaging, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and other analytical tools to study signaling transductions in the context of neuron mechanobiology and inflammation.