Alison Patteson
Syracuse University, NY·Biophysics·Early-career
To heal a wound, build an embryo or maintain healthy tissue, cells must crawl through crowded spaces. Sometimes they squeeze through pores smaller than their own nucleus, the compartment that holds the DNA.
- Fields
Biophysics
Biology
Physics
- Topics
vimentin
intermediate filaments
cytoskeleton
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2028
What they work on
- Determine how vimentin intermediate filaments control the shape and deformability of the nucleus as cells squeeze through confined 3D spaces.
- Define how vimentin sets up whole-cell polarization and traction stress, the pulling forces cells exert on their surroundings, during 3D migration, using traction force microscopy.
- Probe vimentin's role in mechanotransduction pathways, which turn physical forces into chemical signals, as cells respond to compressive forces.
- Test how vimentin shapes cytoskeleton-driven 3D cell movement, including its interactions with actin stress fibers and microtubules, by comparing migration in 3D microfluidic channels and on 2D surfaces.
- Identify vimentin's role in integrin expression and focal adhesion activation, the attachments through which cells grip the surrounding extracellular matrix.
- Uncover how vimentin enables groups of cells to migrate together through extracellular matrix networks.
More about the research
A soft nucleus helps a cell squeeze through, but the strain can damage the nucleus and contribute to disease. Both projects center on vimentin, a protein that forms intermediate filaments. Intermediate filaments are one of the three fiber networks of the cytoskeleton, the cell's internal scaffold; the other two are actin filaments and microtubules. The shared question is how vimentin helps cells sense and withstand mechanical forces while moving through three-dimensional (3D) tissue.
Why it matters
Cell migration through tissue underlies wound repair, and abnormal migration drives diseases such as fibrosis and cancer metastasis. Explaining how vimentin protects the nucleus and steers movement could suggest ways to help cells move during wound healing. It could also suggest ways to block harmful cell movement and nuclear damage in fibrosis and cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jian Liu
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Biophysics
Determine how force transmission at a focal adhesion and elongation of its attached stress fiber cross-talk to produce stiffness sensing, by comparing mathematical model predictions with traction measurements.
Soichiro Yamada
University of California-Davis, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Identify the proteins that gather around keratin intermediate filaments in epithelial cells with and without applied force, by using promiscuous biotin labeling to chemically tag nearby proteins while cells are being mechanically stimulated.
Dimitrios Vavylonis
Lehigh University, PA·Biophysics
Model how fission yeast nodes — membrane protein clusters that time cell cycle progression and cytokinesis — assemble at the nanoscale, focusing on interactions of Cdc15, Mid1 and Cdr2 with each other and with the membrane.
The school
Syracuse University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $199M a year on research, 168 research doctorates a year.
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