Nuclear Structure, Dynamics, & Integrity - The LusKing Lab at Yale School of Medicine

Transcript

• 00:05- The nucleus is really
• 00:07the command center of all the cells in our body.
• 00:10It houses and ultimately protects
• 00:13the genetic code of all our cells
• 00:16and so that protection is actually afforded
• 00:19by this really unique membrane system that we call the nuclear envelope.
• 00:24- Because the nucleus is such an integrator of signals,
• 00:28we really need to think about how is that integration
• 00:31happening to maintain health and how is it altered in disease?
• 00:39I think for us, we're particularly interested
• 00:42in the relationship between the integrity of the nucleus
• 00:46and the integrity of the genome itself,
• 00:48and thinking about this crosstalk between
• 00:51how cells are actually surveilling, whether the nucleus is functioning well
• 00:57and how that ultimately can impinge on the genome.
• 01:01- We're a fundamental biology lab, so we're very interested in understanding
• 01:06what we would call fundamental molecular mechanisms
• 01:09that control how the nucleus works
• 01:12and I think once we're armed with this knowledge, we're in a very strong position
• 01:17to be able to understand what happens in different disease states.
• 01:24- So really take a very interdisciplinary approach.
• 01:28It's one of the things we really love about being at Yale
• 01:32and embedded in the Yale School of Medicine.
• 01:34So, within our own laboratory, we have collaborations with physicists
• 01:39who are in the faculty of Arts and Sciences and Yale,
• 01:42and our work with them really helps us model the genome,
• 01:45thinking about actually the genome and its mechanical contributions to the nucleus,
• 01:50thinking about how the nucleus responds to force.
• 01:54- We're quite flexible in the way we approach sites.
• 01:57We ask questions and we use the experimental model systems and the experimental techniques
• 02:04that are most suited or best suited to answer those questions.
• 02:13So I think one of the most
• 02:14exciting things about doing fundamental biology
• 02:18is that we often don't know where it's going to lead.
• 02:23We have no idea.
• 02:24And I think this is, to me, one of the most exciting elements
• 02:27of the science that we do because it enables really unanticipated discovery.
• 02:34- Really be as basic scientists, someone who sits in the middle
• 02:38of really fundamental concepts that we really lean on
• 02:42many of our other disciplines and kind of the physical, chemical
• 02:46and basic sciences.
• 02:48But really motivated by observations that come from clinical medicine
• 02:51and where there are open questions,
• 02:53where really at the basic scientists are essential, to really make progress ultimately
• 02:59and connecting these two worlds
• 03:00that might seem really far apart, but actually we can see
• 03:03are both really, in many ways interested in some of the same fundamental questions.