{"id":76929,"date":"2018-09-21T10:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=76929"},"modified":"2022-10-28T19:07:33","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T23:07:33","slug":"sgro-grant-national-science-foundations-big-10-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2018\/09\/21\/sgro-grant-national-science-foundations-big-10-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Sgro Lands Grant to Study One of the National Science Foundation\u2019s Big 10 Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Liz Sheeley<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
A series of time-lapse images show how social amoeba cluster together for survival after starvation. Images provided by Assistant Professor Allyson Sgro (BME)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Assistant Professor Allyson Sgro<\/a> (BME) has been awarded a two-year $150,000 grant under the National Science Foundation\u2019s (NSF) 10 Big Ideas<\/a> program to elucidate how cells work together to form groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the goals of the Biological Design Center<\/a> at BU, which I am a part of, is to understand life\u2019s design principles,\u201d says Sgro. \u201cWhen I saw this call for proposals I realized that my work and the Center\u2019s goal fit perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sgro\u2019s research focuses on understanding how cells work together and make decisions to form groups. She will study how cells use both short- and long-range communication to do things like synchronize behaviors and cluster together. Then, Sgro will work with a collaborator at Princeton University to build a mathematical model of how feedbacks between these types of communication allow individuals in groups to coordinate their behavior.<\/p>\n

To study this phenomenon, the researchers will use the social amoeba, a long-standing model organism for collective behavior. The social amoeba, a type of slime mold, communicates between cells through a molecule that is used for communication inside the cells of many different organisms. Because it is a common signaling molecule, there are existing sensors that the researchers can re-engineer to visualize long-range communication dynamics between the slime mold cells. The short-range communication will be mapped by visualizing how the cells control how well they stick together when they interact and touch each other.<\/p>\n

Sgro hopes that with a mathematical framework that captures how single cells use feedback to work together in groups, they will be able to identify general practices by which all organisms control group behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assistant Professor Allyson Sgro (BME) has been awarded a two-year grant under the National Science Foundation\u2019s (NSF) 10 Big Ideas program to elucidate how cells work together to form groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13786,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,255],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13786"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128460,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76929\/revisions\/128460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}