Recent work from the Shekhar lab (led by graduate student Ekram Towsif) was featured in The Scientist magazine! Their pre-print on how actin filaments assemble and disassemble is changing the field. Read more about it here! https://www.the-scientist.com/complicated-cap-does-it-all-71765
RNA polymerases must transit through protein roadblocks to produce full-length transcripts. Building on preliminary work by Finzi lab alumni Yan Yan and Wenxuan Xu, graduate student Jin Qian recently used magnetic tweezers to discover that RNA polymerases can backtrack and ram into longer lived protein roadblocks to transit through them during transcription. He was helped in … More Battering the roadblocks of RNA transcription
The NSF has awarded a CAREER grant to Prof. Rieser to use experimental and computational techniques to establish links between architecture and functionality of the complex nest structures created by red imported fire ant colonies. Specifically, this research seeks to understand how above- and below-ground nests are organized to achieve mechanical robustness and to facilitate … More Prof. Jennifer Rieser receives NSF CAREER Award
The American Physical Society has named Emory biophysicist Laura Finzi as one of its 2023 Fellows, a distinction given to researchers who have made significant contributions to the application of physics to science and technology and advanced physics through original research. The APS honors only about half of a percent of its members with the Fellows distinction. … More Professor Laura Finzi named American Physical Society Fellow
The Keck Foundation awarded Emory physicists Minsu Kim (left) and Justin Burton $1.2 million to explore how microbes adapt to living in the Earth’s atmosphere and the broader role that these organisms may play in the planet’s ecosystem. Microbes have an incredible ability to thrive in different environments. Extensive research has shown the vital roles … More Emory physicists to study airborne microbes, funded by $1.2 million Keck Award
Physicists have developed a dynamical model of animal behavior that may explain some mysteries surrounding associative learning going back to Pavlov’s dogs. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the findings, based on experiments on a common laboratory organism, the roundworm C. elegans. “We showed how learned associations are not mediated by just … More As the worm turns: New twists in behavioral association theories
RNA polymerase is an enzyme that catalyzes gene transcription, the first step in the process of turning a DNA sequence into proteins, the components of cellular machinery and structure. The journal, FEBS Letters, featured research led by Professor of Physics, Laura Finzi, showing how RNA polymerase navigates “roadblocks” along template DNA, that are composed of wraps and loops in the DNA created by DNA-binding proteins. … More How gene transcription navigates roadblocks
Assistant professor Daniel Weissman has received an NSF CAREER grant to study how pathogens evolve. Dr. Weissman’s group will use dynamical data from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to infer how viral mutations interact and will use sequencing data from the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus to determine how gene exchange among different strains of bacteria drives their adaptation. … More Daniel Weissman earns NSF CAREER award to study pathogen evolution
Ilya Nemenman is one of only two recipients of this year’s Simons Investigators award for Theoretical Physics in Life Sciences, honoring “outstanding theoretical scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field and effectively mentoring junior scientists.” The appointment is renewable, with an initial period … More Ilya Nemenman honored with Simons Investigators award
BY W.XU, D. DUNLAP, & L. FINZI (Pictured Left to Right: D. Dunlap, W. XU, L. Finzi) Our goal is to review the main theoretical models used to calculate free energy changes associated with common, torsion-induced conformational changes in DNA and provide the resulting equations hoping to facilitate quantitative analysis of both in vitro and … More Spotlight on “Energetics of twisted DNA topologies”