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Enrique R. Rojas, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, New York University, NY, will give a talk titled, "Smart Bacterial Materials." 

This seminar will also be available by Zoom. Zoom link:
Meeting ID:  996 5167 3069. Passcode:  ASRC-CCNY.

Please note:

* Full names must be used to be admitted to the Zoom meeting.

* The Zoom meeting will be closed and locked at 12:15 p.m., and no one will be able to enter the meeting after that time.

ABSTRACT

One of the most common cellular morphologies across nature is the cylinder, rod, or bacillus. To achieve this shape, cells usually reinforce the circumference of the cell to avoid cell widening while allowing elongation. However, it is not known--in any system--how cells homeostatically specify cell width. I will show, first, how the cell wall of Gram-positive bacteria like Bacillus subtilis exhibit extraordinary non-linear mechanical properties, including both stress-stiffening and stress-softening in different regimes of intracellular pressure. I will next explain how the cell exploits these properties to adaptively execute cell width homeostasis. Our preliminary studies in plant roots reveal that this generic strategy may appear convergently across many systems.