CELL PROBE

In order to engineer the structure of organelles, cells, and tissues, we must first understand how the molecular and mechanical state of the cell maps to its structure. This requires the development of new tools to image and quantify cell structure, as well as new tools to perturb and measure the molecular and mechanical state of cells and tissues. Using these tools, we aim to illuminate a mapping from molecular state to cell structure, as well as from cell structure back to molecular state. Completion of this work will allow forward design and engineering of cell structure (conducted in themes 2-4), as well as the potentially transformational ability to predict the internal molecular state of a cell from a snapshot of its structure.