Keara Lane, Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University, presents at the NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology Collaboration Development Workshop
On August 14th, 2024, the NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology convened to introduce the work of a diverse selection of biologists to mathematical theorists with the purpose of developing new collaborations that could answer important questions in biological research. The NSF-Simons NITMB Collaboration Development Workshop invited nine biologists to present their work to the NITMB community, igniting conversations and potential collaborations. Assistant Professor Keara Lane was one such researcher who presented at the workshop.
Keara Lane, Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University
Keara Lane is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University. The Lane Lab at Northwestern University is focused on developing tools and approaches to explore the time dimension, or dynamics, of bacterial infection in individual cells.
We spoke with Keara Lane to learn about Lane’s work with single cell signaling dynamics.
What is your current research?
“My lab is interested in how individual cells process information from their environment and execute complex decision-making in response to these signals. A central theme of my lab is thinking about signaling dynamics. Not just whether signaling pathways are on or off, but whether cells can use the temporal profiles of these signaling pathways to encode information about the stimuli that they encounter and to execute more complex decision-making than would otherwise be possible."
What disciplines does your research integrate?
“Most of our research revolves around using live-cell imaging. We’re specifically focused on signaling dynamics and examining heterogeneity in single-cell responses. We do all of this in the context of host-pathogen interactions. We also have some intersection with microbiology and immunology.”
Where do you find inspiration?
“I enjoy reading a lot of old scientific literature because there are a lot of beautifully
designed experiments that are very elegant and get at the heart of some fundamental
biological problems. But I also enjoy sitting in front of the microscope and looking at cells and
how they respond to stimuli over time, because I think that was what first engaged me in the
field of signaling dynamics. Once you see all of this variation and temporal behavior under the
microscope, it’s very hard to look away and think about doing something else. Just looking at
the movies, you see many things you don’t anticipate. Imaging reminds you how incredibly dynamic cells are and how critical it is to incorporate the time dimension into our efforts to measure and model cell responses."
What aspects of your research could be interesting to mathematicians or applied to biology?
“Noise and stochasticity are very prevalent in all biological systems, including host-pathogen interactions. I think modeling these stochastic processes would be interesting. We have a lot of quantitative data, not just on single cells, but single cells over time. At the end of
the day, it is an information processing problem. I think that may be of great interest to mathematicians and theorists, as well as the question of how cells generate reliable responses in complex, uncertain environments.”
What about the NITMB do you find exciting?
“I am excited about the opportunity to engage with mathematicians and theorists. We all have unique perspectives on how to tackle fundamental questions in biology. It can be challenging for people with such diverse backgrounds to find ways to interact in the traditional structure of university departments. NITMB provides opportunities for these cross-discipline interactions to occur. It allows us to start informally talking to each other and hear about different projects, and then initiate what will hopefully become long-standing collaborations.”
What career achievement are you most proud of?
“The idea that our immune cells can use signaling dynamics to potentially discriminate between pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria. This was an important finding because we know our immune cells can scale their response according to the type of stimulus they encounter, but it was unclear how they do this. Our findings highlight the incredible signal processing capacity of our immune cells. These findings informed a lot of the directions in my own lab.”
Outside of your research, what other interests do you have?
“I took up CrossFit last year as a way to relieve some stress. I’m also a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and I enjoy going to baseball and soccer games.”
What are you hoping to work on in the future?
“We’ve been working a lot on how individual cells process information. But we’ve recently been thinking about how individual cells work together in populations and whether there are emergent behaviors that arise. We’re exploring this in the context of host immune cells and epithelial cells, but also in bacteria, and whether there is spatial structure to the community of bacteria that develop inside a host. An ongoing challenge for the field of signaling dynamics is relating the temporal profiles of signaling molecules to cell function. Advances in our capacity to connect different types of measurements with signaling dynamics in single cells will be needed to accomplish this.”
The NITMB community enjoyed welcoming Keara Lane for the NITMB Collaboration Development Workshop. More information on Lane’s work is available on the Lane Lab website.
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