2008

Saturday, April 5, 2008
Special Event:
Engineering and Physical Biology Symposium
9:00am   Doug Smith  
Professor of Physics,
University of California, San Diego
Dynamics of entangled DNA molecules and mechanisms of knot formation.

9:40am    Mehran Kardar   
Professor of Physics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Less can also be different.

10:20am   Dennis Discher  
Prof. of Engineering and Applied Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania
Matrix to nucleus: Matrix elasticity directs stem cell differentiation.

11:00am    coffee break

11:30am    Kiyoshi Mizuuchi  
Section Chief, Lab. of Molecular Biology,
NIH NIDDK
Diffusion-based biomolecular patterning systems.

Monday, March 10, 2008
Jay Fisher (FAS CSB; MCB)
In vitro and in vivo relaxation
of DNA.

Peter Galajda (FAS CSB)
Microfabricated structures to study
and manipulate bacterial populations.

Monday, February 11, 2008
Elena Katifori (Physics)
Folding of pollen grains.

Adam Cohen (CCB)
The dynamics of single biomolecules
in free solution.

2007

Monday, December 10, 2007
Michael Rust (CSB, MCB)
Multisite phosphorylation governs oscillation
of a three-protein circadian clock.

Hyman Hartman (MIT, Dept. of Biology)
Biological clocks and condensed matter
physics.

Monday, November 5, 2007
Guido Guidotti (MCB)
ATP secretion in yeast and other
eukaryotic cells: mechanism.

Howard Stone and Jiandi Wan (SEAS)
Shear stress induced ATP release
by red blood cells.

Monday, October 15, 2007
Nancy Kleckner (MCB)
Actin-mediated chromosome motion
and accompanying nuclear envelope tubes.

Suckjoon Jun (CSB)
Cost of chromosome territory formation:
a naïve physicist's view.

Monday, February 12, 2007
Mark Bates (CCB)
High resolution fluorescence imaging
using photo-switchable probes.

David Nelson (Physics)
Neutral mutations and gene surfing
in microorganisms.

2006

Monday, December 11, 2006
Jané Kondev, Dept. of Physics, Brandeis
Confined polymers and chromosome geography

Oliver Ruebenacker (DEAS)
Membrane tethers, soft rheology and the virtual cell

Monday, September 25, 2006
William M. Gelbart, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA
Making viruses

Monday, September 11, 2006
Buddhapriya Chakrabarti, Physics
Nanopore translocation and shear denaturation of DNA

Sei Kameoka, MCB
Chromosome motion at meiotic pachytene

Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Special Seminar, Co-sponsored by the daVinci Group
and Widely Applied Mathematics (WAM)
Suckjoon Jun, FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Entropy-driven spatial organization of highly confined
polymers: lessons for bacterial chromosome dynamics.

May 8, 2006
Peko Hosoi, Mechanical Engineering, MIT
Building a better snail : Modeling and optimizing
low Reynolds number locomotion

William J. Bosl, Harvard Medical School (CHIP@HST)  
Intelligent design by evolution : Engineering
complex cell dynamics by evolutionary computation

April 10, 2006
Dorothee Kern, Biochemistry, Brandeis University
Intrinsic motions along the enzymatic reaction trajectory
observed by crystallography, NMR and computation.

Jacques Dumais, OEB
Cellular mechanics and morphogenesis
of pollen grains.

March 13, 2006
Howard Stone, DEAS
Diffusion of particles in surface films:
Rhenology of surfactant monolayers
and applications to transport processes
along membranes.

Guido Guidotti, MCB
Dynamic motions of transmembrane helices.

February 13, 2006
Karen Kasza, DEAS and Physics
Filaments and non-linear cell mechanics.

Howard Berg, MCB and Physics
Using fluorescence depolarization
to watch chemoreceptors breathe.

January 9, 2006
Doug Weibel, CCB 
Bacterial shapes.

Andrew Kiruluta, Physics
Diffusion tensor based NMR inverse
imaging of cellular confining geometries

2005

November 14, 2005
Tom Maniatis, MCB
Chromosomal interactions and transcription.

 Vincent Coljee, Physics
DNA unzipping.

October 17, 2005
Arvind Gopinath, DEAS
Dynamics of flagellar oscillations.

Florian Engert , MCB
Visually induced behavior and neuronal
activity in the young zebrafish.

September 12, 2005
Silas Alben, DEAS
Self-assembly of elastic sheets
into 3D structures.

Julie McGeoch, MCB
Why do some Eubacteria have complex
membrane structures normally associated
with secretion in Eukaria?