WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.
Issue link: http://wpiresearch.epubxp.com/i/229254
Woods Hole, which was fantastic, because I had taken that same course a few years before. It gave us a common experience to talk about." An exchange of messages led to phone conversations, then meetings over coffee, and even a few beers after work. "Right away, Erkan understood the problems I was facing in my lab, and he could communicate to me in biological language, not just using mathematics," Vidali says. Tüzel jumps in to emphasize the same point. "Luis is very quantitative, compared to many biologists I have met in the feld," he says. "So it was easy for us to talk about things right from the start." SYNERGY IN ACTION It turned out both were focused on similar fundamental questions. Tüzel studies microtubules, which are small yet strong flaments that give cells structure (a cytoskeleton) and the molecular motors that transport cargo along these microtubules in support of cellular processes. Much of Vidali's work is also focused on the cytoskeleton and how the complex overlapping networks of microtubules and flaments made of the protein actin are involved in directing plant growth. Vidali and his laboratory team conduct experiments with living cells and whole plants. Tüzel's team uses advanced mathematical modeling and builds high-power computational tools to simulate the dynamics within cells. By joining forces, they bring complementary science and technology to bear on common problems. It is a synergistic partnership that helps each team advance. "One of the big diffculties of being a theorist today is having access to raw data," Tüzel says. "In many traditional areas of physics, there are a number of important problems to be solved, but thousands of researchers are already working on them. And it's hard to get access to unpublished data. By working directly with Luis, not only do we explore these exciting and incredibly complex biological systems, but we also get real-time data on novel problems that we use to evaluate and refne our models." Dealing with big data has become a major challenge for biologists. Decoding genomes, which produces hundreds of millions of data points, even for simple plants, is only the frst level of mathematical complexity. How those genes 34 > wpi.edu/+research From left, Goker Arpag, a PhD candidate in physics, Tüzel, Vidali, and Zhiyuan Shen, an MS candidate in biology and biotechnology, discuss ongoing research collaborations in the offce that Tüzel and Vidali share in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center. produce proteins, which then assemble into structures that form and operate the processes of life, all in the dynamic, fuidic, three-dimensional environment of cells, are biomechanical events that can now be measured. "Biologists today can easily be overwhelmed with the huge data sets we get from our experiments," Vidali says. "So working with Erkan and his group, who understand the physics of complex mechanical systems and can write programs and build models that help us analyze all this data and make predictions — that gives us a tremendous advantage." With data, one can build models that simulate cellular processes in motion over time. Feedback from those simulations then helps refne hypotheses to be tested on living cells in the lab. Through this collaborative cycle, Tüzel and Vidali have jointly discovered and published new knowledge about cytoskeletal dynamics and the molecular mechanics underlying tip growth in plants.