Principal Investigator Roger Kamm
The cytoskeleton is comprised of a filamentous network (actin, microtubules and intermediate filaments) capable of polymerization, depolymerization, cross-linking, and branching in response to both biochemical and mechanical stimuli. The laboratory is conducting experiments in living cells to probe this dynamic behavior and also developing computational models to simulate it.
Multi-scale modeling is one of the goals in which we plan to couple cytoskeletal modeling with molecular dynamics simulation of cytoskeletal proteins, or proteins that link the cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix (focal adhesions) or neighboring cells (adherens junctions).