WEBVTT

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- The nucleus is really

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the command center
of all the cells in our body.

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It houses and ultimately protects

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the genetic code of all our cells

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and so that protection
is actually afforded

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by this really unique membrane system
that we call the nuclear envelope.

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- Because the nucleus
is such an integrator of signals,

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we really need to think about
how is that integration

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happening to maintain health
and how is it altered in disease?

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I think for us, we're
particularly interested

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in the relationship
between the integrity of the nucleus

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and the integrity of the genome itself,

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and thinking about this crosstalk between

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how cells are actually surveilling,
whether the nucleus is functioning well

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and how that ultimately
can impinge on the genome.

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- We're a fundamental biology lab,
so we're very interested in understanding

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what we would call
fundamental molecular mechanisms

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that control how the nucleus works

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and I think once we're armed with this
knowledge, we're in a very strong position

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to be able to understand
what happens in different disease states.

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- So really take a very interdisciplinary approach.

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It's one of the things we really love
about being at Yale

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and embedded in the Yale School of Medicine.

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So, within our own laboratory,
we have collaborations with physicists

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who are in the faculty
of Arts and Sciences and Yale,

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and our work with them really
helps us model the genome,

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thinking about actually the genome and
its mechanical contributions to the nucleus,

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thinking about how the nucleus responds to force.

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- We're quite flexible
in the way we approach sites.

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We ask questions and we use the experimental model systems and the experimental techniques

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that are most suited or best suited
to answer those questions.

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So I think one of the most

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exciting things
about doing fundamental biology

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is that we often
don't know where it's going to lead.

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We have no idea.

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And I think this is, to me,
one of the most exciting elements

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of the science that we do because it
enables really unanticipated discovery.

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- Really be as basic scientists,
someone who sits in the middle

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of really fundamental concepts
that we really lean on

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many of our other disciplines
and kind of the physical, chemical

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and basic sciences.

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But really motivated by observations
that come from clinical medicine

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and where there are open questions,

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where really at the basic scientists
are essential, to really make progress ultimately

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and connecting these two worlds

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that might seem really far apart,
but actually we can see

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are both really, in many ways interested
in some of the same fundamental questions.