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This 2-week program deals with the ancient origins of the eukaryotic compartmentalized cell plan. Surprisingly little is known about this key phase of the evolution of life on earth: eukaryotes began to diverge from bacteria during the global oxygenation event 2.5 billion years ago, but all living eukaryotes share a more recent common ancestor dating from about 1 billion years ago. Data from modern eukaryotic genomes, as well as exciting recent studies of rudimentary compartments in bacterial cells, might allow us to reconstruct the intervening 1.5 billion year period during which quintessential eukaryotic features emerged: the nucleus, compartmentalized organelles, the cytoskeletal machinery, and vesicle traffic.The program brings together two ingredients: (1) The cell biology and biophysics of intracellular compartments and vesicle traffic. (2) The evolution of key molecular players involved in generating and maintaining intracellular compartments. We will have pedagogical tutorials ...

This 2-week program deals with the ancient origins of the eukaryotic compartmentalized cell plan. Surprisingly little is known about this key phase of the evolution of life on earth: eukaryotes began to diverge from bacteria during the global oxygenation event 2.5 billion years ago, but all living eukaryotes share a more recent common ancestor dating from about 1 billion years ago. Data from modern eukaryotic genomes, as well as exciting recent studies of rudimentary compartments in bacterial cells, might allow us to reconstruct the intervening 1.5 billion year period during which quintessential eukaryotic features emerged: the nucleus, compartmentalized organelles, the cytoskeletal machinery, and vesicle traffic.The program brings together two ingredients: (1) The cell biology and biophysics of intracellular compartments and vesicle traffic. (2) The evolution of key molecular players involved in generating and maintaining intracellular compartments. We will have pedagogical tutorials ...

(School: 30 Jan - 5 Feb 2012 at JNCASR)(Symposium: 6 - 8 Feb 2012 at NCBS)It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the concept of a ‘material’ goes well beyond its origins in hard condensed matter or materials science. Functional materials, such as shape memory alloys, show complex multiscale patterns of elastic domain walls. Glassy and driven materials involve nonequilibrium states of matter that go beyond conventional thermodynamics. Granular materials show stress propagation along force chains, jamming and intriguing connections with the physics of amorphous solids. Living cells and tissues are active materials displaying unique mechanical properties in their steady state, and in their response to stresses.The presently distinct fields of condensed matter physics, materials science, biological physics, and statistical mechanics, have close foundational links, and James A Krumhansl (1919-2004) had long advocated dissolving intellectual phase separations between them. In ...