16 November 2013
KC Huang probes basic questions of bacterial life
canada goose clearance sale Physicists often ponder small things, but probably not the ones on Kerwyn Casey “KC” Huang’s mind. He wants to know what it’s like to be a bacterium. canada goose clearance sale
buy canada goose jacket “My motivating questions are about understanding the physical challenges bacterial cells face,” he says. Bacteria are the dominant life forms on Earth. They affect the health of plants and animals, including humans, canada goose for good uk canada goose and bad. Yet scientists know very little about the rules canada goose uk black friday the canada goose clearance sale microbes live by. Even questions as basic as how bacteria determine their shape are still up in the air, says Huang, of Stanford University. buy canada goose jacket
canada goose clearance Huang, 38, Canada Goose Parka is out to canada goose store change that. He and colleagues have determined what gives cholera bacteria their curved shape and whether it matters (a polymer protein, and it does matter; the curve makes it easier for cholera to cause disease), how different wavelengths of light affect movement of photosynthetic bacteria (red and green wavelengths encourage movement; blue light stops the microbes in their tracks), how bacteria coordinate cell division machinery and how photosynthetic bacteria’s growth changes in light and dark. canada goose clearance
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canada goose deals Huang also looks for ways to use tools and techniques his team develops to solve problems unrelated to bacteria. Computer programs that measure changes in bacterial cell shape can also track cells in plant roots and in developing zebrafish embryos. He’s even teamed up with his statistician sister. He’s an “all in one scientist,” says longtime collaborator Ned Wingreen, a biophysicist at Princeton University. at MIT and spending time at Princeton as a postdoctoral fellow, his background was purely theoretical. He designed and ran https://www.canadagoosejacketsoutsale.com the computer simulations and Canada Goose Outlet then his collaborators carried out the experiments. But soon, he wanted to do hands on research too, to learn why cells are the way they are. canada goose deals
buy canada goose jacket cheap Such cheap Canada Goose a leap “is not trivial,” says Christine Jacobs Wagner, a microbiologist at Yale University who also studies bacterial cell shape. But Huang is “a really, really good experimentalist,” she says. buy canada goose jacket cheap
canada goose store Jacobs Wagner was particularly impressed with a “brilliant microfluidics experiment” Huang canadian goose jacket did to test a well established truism about how bacteria grow. Researchers used to think that turgor pressure water pressure inside a cell canada goose clearance that pushes the outer membrane against the cell wall controlled bacterial growth, just like it does in plants. But abolishing turgor pressure didn’t change E. coli’s growth rate, Huang and colleagues reported in 2014 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This result blew my mind away,” Jacobs Wagner says. The finding “crumbled canada goose black friday sale the foundation” of what scientists thought about bacterial growth. canada goose store
Canada Goose Parka “He uses clever experiments to challenge old paradigms,” Jacobs Wagner says. “More than canada goose factory sale once he has come up with a new trick to address a tough question.” Canada Goose Parka
Canada Goose sale Where and when are bacteria in the gut growing? canada goose uk shop No one knows. How can we not know that? It’s totally fundamental. Canada Goose sale
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Canada Goose Jackets Sometimes Huang’s tricks require breaking things. Zemer Gitai, a microbiologist at Princeton, remembers talking with Huang and Wingreen about a cheap canada goose uk question that microbiologists were stuck on: How are molecules oriented in bacterial cell walls? Researchers knew that the walls are made of rigid buy canada goose jacket cheap sugar Canada Goose sale strands connected by flexible proteins, like a chain link fence held together by rubber bands. What they didn’t know was whether the rubber bands circled the bacteria like the hoops on a wine barrel, ran in stripes down the length of the cell or stuck out like hairs. Canada Goose Jackets
canadian goose jacket If bacteria were put under pressure, the cells would crack along the weak rubber band like links, Huang and Wingreen reasoned. If the cells split like hot dogs on a grill, it would mean Canada Goose Jackets the links ran the length buy canada goose jacket of the cells. If they opened like a Slinky, it would suggest a wine barrel configuration. The researchers reported the results opened like a Slinky in 2008. Another group, using improved microscope techniques, got the same result. canadian goose jacket
canada goose black friday sale Huang canada goose outlet teamed up with other researchers to do microfluidics experiments, growing bacteria in tiny chambers and tracking individual cells to learn how photosynthetic bacteria grow in light and dark. canada goose black friday sale
canada goose coats on sale But in nature, bacteria don’t live alone. So Huang has also worked with Stanford colleague Justin Sonnenburg to answer a basic question: “Where and when are bacteria in Canada Goose Online the gut growing? No one knows,” Huang says. “How can we not know that? It’s totally fundamental.” Without that information, it’s impossible canada goose coats on sale to know, for example, how antibiotics affect the microbial community in the intestines, he says. canada goose coats on sale
canada goose Stripping fiber from a mouse’s diet not only changes the mix of microbes in the gut, it alters where in the intestines the microbes grow, the researchers discovered. Bacteria deprived of fiber’s complex sugars began to munch on the protective mucus lining the intestines, bumping against the intestinal lining and sparking inflammation, Huang, Sonnenburg and colleagues reported in Cell Host Microbe in 2015. canada goose
cheap Canada Goose Huang’s breadth of research from deciphering the nanoscale twists Canada Goose Coats On Sale of proteins to mapping whole microbial canada goose uk outlet communities is sure to lead to many more discoveries. “He’s capable of making contributions to any field,” Jacobs Wagner says, “or any research question that he’s interested in.” cheap Canada Goose.