CAREER: Mechanical control of cellular physiology in bacteria

这个综合项目培养学生和博士后学者在新兴的跨学科微生物学领域的最前沿进行研究，该领域旨在描述细菌如何使用大的机械力来控制重要的细胞过程，如细胞生长和细胞之间的通信。 这一努力将彻底改变我们对细菌的理解，细菌是生物学研究的基石，其许多能力是农业和工业生产力的基础。 此外，该项目将基础微生物学研究纳入课程，为本科生和纽约市监狱囚犯联合开设一门新的“由内而外”微生物学课程，这将打破这些群体之间的刻板印象，并有助于他们的职业轨迹。这项研究将测试的中心假设是，细菌精确地调整其细胞包膜中的机械力，以积极控制亚细胞生理学方面，利用细胞膜衍生囊泡的释放和细胞表面扩张两个主要过程来探讨这一机制。 最先进的微流体技术将与新型显微镜方法相结合，分子微生物学技术将用于精确改变细菌包膜内的机械特性和力，同时在单细胞水平上测量这些过程的动力学。 将采用先进的生物物理建模技术来解释数据和指导实验。 这些实验的结果将直接整合到新颖的“由内而外”课程中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This integrative project trains students and postdoctoral scholars to perform research at the forefront of an emerging interdisciplinary field of microbiology, which seeks to describe how bacteria use large mechanical forces to control important cellular processes such as cell growth and communication between cells. This effort stands to revolutionize our understanding of bacteria, a keystone of biological research and whose many capabilities underlie agricultural and industrial productivity. Additionally, this project integrates fundamental microbiological research into the curriculum for a new “Inside-Out” microbiology course offered jointly to undergraduate students and New York City prison inmates, which will break down stereotypes between these groups and contribute to their career trajectories.The central hypothesis that this research will test is that bacteria precisely tune mechanical forces in their cell envelope in order to actively control subcellular physiology, using release of envelope-derived vesicles and cell surface expansion as the two major processes to explore this mechanism. State-of-the-art microfluidic technology will be combined with novel microscopy methods, and molecular microbiological techniques will be used to precisely alter the mechanical properties and forces within the bacterial envelope while measuring the dynamics of these processes at the single-cell level. Sophisticated biophysical modeling techniques will be employed to interpret data and guide experiments. The results of these experiments will be directly integrated into the novel “Inside-Out” course.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.