A platelet that finds a newly-formed vascular injury must be able to stop, attach firmly to the vessel wall, and recruit other platelets, all under the high-shear environment of blood flow. The receptor αIIbβ3 is vital to the coagulation process that creates thrombi, but at rest it is kept inactive to prevent unwanted blood clots. This project uses a dynamical systems model to examine the intracellular protein kinetics required to activate αIIbβ3 that begin with the binding of ADP to P2Y receptors on the platelet's surface.
Mechanically sensitive protein Von Willebrand Factor (vWF) allows for platelet aggregation at high shear rate without the need for prior activation signals. The goal of this project is to develop a 0-D model of platelet aggregation to study the effect of vWF at high shear. We consider the aggregate as a porous medium; the drag force imparted by the fluid must be balanced by the crosslinking bonds, which themselves break in a force-dependent fashion. We study both change in the density and height of the aggregate across physiologically relevant parameters.
| Society for Mathematical Biology 2024 | Invited Minisymposium Speaker |
| SIAM Life Sciences 2024 | Minisymposium co-organizer and Presenter |
| Joint Math Meetings 2024 | Contributed Talk |
| Society for Mathematical Biology 2023 | Contributed Talk |
| International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics 2023 | Minisymposium Co-organizer and Presenter |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Cells exert forces on their 3-D environments to migrate. The improvements to super-resolution microscopy allows us to examine a cell over time and track motion. This project uses the known mechanical properties of a cell's environment to calculate (via inverse problems) the forces exerted by a cell over time.
Broadly neutrilizing antibodies found in the cervico-vaginal mucus have been shown to have weak affinity to mucin monomers. This project seeks to determine properties of Ab that maximize the trapping and neutrilizing of HIV virions before entering the body.
Kinesin molecular motor proteins transport cargo several times larger than itself by "walking" down microtubules. Single motors are known to detach from the microtubule often, yet the overal transport process is extremely efficient. This project examines the effect of cooperation among molecular motors in transporting cargo from both a stochastic and deterministic standpoint.
Patel KB, Mao S, Lai SK, Forest GM, Newby JM. Limited Processivity of Single Motors Improves Overall Transport Flux of Self-Assembled Motor-Cargo Complexes. Physical Review E. 100:022408. (2019)