Biophysics Seminars Archive

Individuals animals vary in their behaviors even when their genetics and environment are held constant. The mechanisms underlying this variation is still largely uncharacterized, though we have made some progress in understanding genetic and circuit variants that lead a population of animals to exhibit high or low variability in behavior.

The ability to move is a trait of all animals. Yet how do animals, including ourselves, get around in this complex and uncertain world with an ease and agility we find hard to recreate in engineered systems? Using an organismal physics approach my group explores the physical and physiological mechanisms that enable agile movement in living...

The electrosensory lobe (ELL) in mormyrid electric fish is a cerebellar-like structure that cancels the sensory effects of self-generated electric fields, allowing prey to be detected. Like the cerebellum, the ELL involves two stages of processing, analogous to the Purkinje cells and output cells of the deep cerebellar nuclei.

Protein folding occurs as a set of transitions between structural states within an energy landscape. An oversimplified view of the folding process emerges when transiently populated states are undetected because of limited instrumental resolution.