Illuminating the biochemical activity architecture of the cell
We hypothesize that cellular biochemical activities are spatially organized into an “activity architecture” via the specific organization of active molecules and their regulatory partners. Perturbations to this activity architecture, even by a few dysregulated driver molecules, could lead to detrimental effects on cellular functions such as loss of control over cell growth, division and death.
We are developing a new generation of enabling technologies for visualizing and perturbing biochemical and biophysical processes in the native environment of a living cell. Enabled by these new technologies, we will start testing this hypothesis by elucidating the spatial organization of the enzymatic activities of protein kinases and characterizing the “dys-organized” activity architectures in cancers.
