{"id":13969,"date":"2021-10-29T13:26:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T17:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/?p=13969"},"modified":"2021-10-29T13:26:06","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T17:26:06","slug":"joe-larkin-receives-2021-mira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/2021\/10\/29\/joe-larkin-receives-2021-mira\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Larkin Receives 2021 MIRA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Joe Larkin received the 2021 Maximizing Investigators\u2019 Research Award (MIRA) to understand how multicellular behaviors emerge in bacterial colonies. His lab investigates how single-cell-level gene regulation of bacterium<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bacillus subtilis<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the physics of the local environment conspire to create cell-to-cell signaling networks and patterns of cell types that allow colonies to divide labor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The MIRA supports research in an investigator\u2019s laboratory that increases the understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Dr. Larkin\u2019s MIRA proposal contained two thrusts: 1) Understanding how ion channels of bacteria cells create cell-to-cell signaling networks and how membrane potential impacts cell physiology and gene expression; 2) Investigating how stereotyped spatial patterns of motile and matrix-produced cells emerge in bacterial biofilms. Dr. Larkin and his team hypothesized that these patterns form due to the inheritance of gene expression state as cells divide and mechanical interactions of different cell types during biofilm growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first thrust was an extension of Dr. Larkin\u2019s postdoctoral work investigating how bacterial cells propagate electro-chemical signals within their communities. The second thrust came from work that members of his lab did during their first year. His team created a computational model that predicted patterns of cell types in biofilms based on phenotype inheritance and mechanical interactions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Congratulations, Joe!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/biology\/files\/2021\/10\/Joseph-Larkin-636x574-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"574\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13970\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Joe Larkin received the 2021 Maximizing Investigators\u2019 Research Award (MIRA) to understand how multicellular behaviors emerge in bacterial colonies. His lab investigates how single-cell-level gene regulation of bacterium Bacillus subtilis and the physics of the local environment conspire to create cell-to-cell signaling networks and patterns of cell types that allow colonies to divide labor.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19779,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13972,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13969\/revisions\/13972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}