Dimitrios Vavylonis
Lehigh University, PA·Biophysics
Cells divide in two, pick a direction to grow, and crawl across surfaces. All three depend on the cytoskeleton — the network of protein filaments that gives a cell shape and generates force — working together with the cell membrane and with signaling proteins that organize on that membrane.
- Fields
Biophysics
Physics
Biology
- Topics
cytoskeleton
actin
cytokinesis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine how phosphorylation, the phosphate-group switch that regulates proteins, and shuttling of node proteins in and out of the nucleus control node assembly, testing multiscale simulations against collaborators' experiments.
- Simulate membrane hydrodynamics and mechanics during fission yeast cytokinesis with coarse-grained fluid models, coupling them to the spatial pattern of exocytosis and endocytosis and testing predictions in vesicle traffic mutants.
- Predict whether membrane flows transport membrane proteins during division and what the consequences are for membrane and cytoskeleton organization.
- Model force generation by branched dendritic actin networks in the presence of myosin I motors, at the level of individual actin filaments.
- Build models of severed actin oligomers in cellular actin transport and of talin linkers connecting the actin cytoskeleton to focal adhesions and the extracellular matrix.
More about the research
The hard part for theory is scale: interactions between individual protein molecules are highly specific, yet what emerges is coordinated behavior across a whole cell. This work builds mathematical and computational models that bridge those scales, developed alongside experimental collaborators who study systems simple enough to measure quantitatively.
Why it matters
Cell division, growth and movement underlie how organisms develop, how cells specialize, how neurons function, and how cancer cells spread by metastasis. Predictive physical models of how the cytoskeleton and membrane cooperate supply the mechanistic foundation that medical research on these processes rests on, and can tell experimentalists which molecular interactions actually matter for cell-scale behavior.
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.
Alison Patteson
Syracuse University, NY·Biophysics·Early-career
Determine how vimentin intermediate filaments control the shape and deformability of the nucleus as cells squeeze through confined 3D spaces.
Sarah Heissler
Ohio State University, OH·Biochemistry
Determine the enzymatic profile of myosin-3 motors, kinase-myosin hybrid proteins, and how their activity is regulated, using biochemical and biophysical measurements on purified proteins.
The school
Lehigh University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $62M a year on research, 99 research doctorates a year.
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