CAREER:'Understand the Multiplexing and Communication in Multicellular Sensory Response

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The goal of this research project is to advance our quantitative understanding of information processing in mammalian cells. While much has been learned about single cell, single pathway signaling dynamics, the collective sensory response via highly multiplexed signaling pathways remains poorly understood. A focus of the project is to understand the physics behind the integrated complexity of noise, multiplexing, and communication through a synergy of multiscale investigations. The PI will join will join his institutional and departmental efforts with three personal initiatives. In order to enhance student experience in interdisciplinary education, the PI will develop a hybrid class: BIOPHYSICS Discovery. He will also organize an annual Workshop for Science Storytellers to team up STEM students and liberal art students. The PI will also expand his current outreach programs with more emphasis on first-generation college students and students from low-income families. He will work with colleagues who run a nationally known Physics Education Research group to implement, assess, and disseminate results of education and outreach initiatives.The PI will study the calcium dynamics of endothelium shear-stress sensing and will use advanced microenvironment engineering, statistical analysis, and theoretical modeling. The results will advance the physics of cellular sensor dynamics and have far-reaching impacts in engineering and medicine. In this project the PI will combine both bottom-up and top-down approaches to address the following key questions: What is the molecular mechanism of multiplexed endothelium shear-stress sensing (aim 1)? What is the role of endothelium geometry in regulating the fidelity and resolution of endothelial cell shear sensing (aim 2)? What is the mesoscale endothelium response to altered hemodynamic microenvironment (aim 3)? Answering these questions will significantly advance the knowledge of not only endothelium biology, but also the physics of cell sensory dynamics.This project is being jointly supported by the Physics of Living Systems program in the Division of Physics and the Systems and Synthetic Biology clusters in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.