R1

They replicate, differentiate into a multitude of cell types, communicate with one another to organize tissues, and develop into multicellular organisms. To do so, they use interlocking molecular and cellular circuits. Our lab seeks to (1) understand how these circuits work so effectively, and (2) design synthetic circuits that can provide interesting and useful new cellular capabilities.

R2

Biological circuits often use non-intuitive designs. Making sense of those designs is essential for understanding, predicting, and controlling cellular behaviors, as well as for creating synthetic therapeutic circuits that can address biomedical challenges. Our lab combines two complementary approaches to biological circuit design.

Systems biology: We analyze natural pathways quantitatively and dynamically in individual cells.

Synthetic biology: We design, create, and analyze fully synthetic circuits that implement new cellular behaviors "from scratch."

These approaches are synergistic: Natural circuits can inspire more effective synthetic designs, while synthetic circuits provoke unique questions about the natural circuits with which they interact.

R3

We focus on circuits that enable computation, multicellularity, and new therapeutic paradigms.

Many-to-many protein networks. Biological circuits tend to employ sets of related protein variants that interact in a seemingly "messy" many-to-many fashion. These circuit designs can, counterintuitively, act as computational systems, loosely analogous to those found in simple artificial neural networks.