Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  6 / 16 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 6 / 16 Next Page
Page Background

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

6

MAY

2016

Biophysical Journal

Know the Editors

James P. Keener

Simon Fraser University

Editor, Systems Biophysics

Q:

What are you currently working

on that excites you and what has been

your most exciting discovery as a

biophysicist?

I am fascinated with big, probably unanswerable,

questions about living organisms. Constructed

from a few basic building block chemicals, they

are an incredibly complex arrangement of interac-

tions that manage to extract energy from some

energy source to do the directed work necessary

to build and maintain structures far from chemi-

cal equilibrium, to faithfully duplicate themselves

and thereby increase their numbers. The details of

how this all works is fascinating to study.

The focus of my recent research has been to

develop mathematical models of physiological and

biophysical processes that can be used to answer

questions such as: How do cells or organisms

make behavioral decisions? What is the informa-

tion available to them? How is that information

translated into directed activity? Some examples

follow:

w

Quorum sensing is the ability that many

bacteria have to make a behavioral decision that

is based on the size of the colony in which they

reside. Within bacteria there is a positive feedback

genetic network that produces a chemical that

freely diffuses across the cell membrane. When

population levels are low, the amount of this

chemical in the extracellular environment is low,

but when it is high, the amount of this chemi-

cal in the environment rises and diffusion of the

chemical across the cell wall is hindered, leading

to an intracellular buildup and a “flipping of a

switch” to upregulate its production.

Rotary flagellar motors are constructed in a precise

step-by-step fashion, with one group of compo-

nents produced first and then a second group of

components are turned on. How is this switch

between components made and what measure-

ments are made to determine when the switch

should take place? There is a length measuring

molecule, which is used to infrequently test the

size of the certain motor components. How is that

information transduced into a decision of what

component should be produced? Our recent work

has helped to quantifiably answer this question.

Cells use membrane transmembrane protein

transporters to import and/or export a large

variety of nutrients and products. It is known that

ubiquitin tagging is typically the signal indicat-

ing that a protein should be removed from the

membrane, but the details of what determines this

tagging, how mistakes are prevented, how proteins

are sorted between destruction or recycling path-

ways, how the proteins are transported between

organelles, how reserves are maintained, etc., are

still largely unknown. We are actively working to

develop mathematical/biophysical models of this

regulatory pathway.

Chromosomes are pushed and pulled by polymer-

izing and depolymerizing microtubules. How can

polymerizing microtubules be used to push and

depolymerizing molecules be used pull? Both po-

lymerization and depolymerization are energetical-

ly favorable reactions, and there are proteins that

regulate and exploit this to accomplish these tasks.

The mathematical description of these processes is

the subject of our recent work on this topic.

The accepted answer to the question, How do car-

diac cells communicate? is that they are coupled

electronically through gap junctions that con-

nect between nearest neighbors. However, recent

experimental findings have produced results for

conduction that contradict classical mathemati-

cal theory. We are currently working to develop

mathematical models that include another kind

of coupling called ephaptic coupling, or field cou-

pling, that may play a significant role.

James P. Keener