Daniel Conway, Ph.D. Professor, The Ohio State University

The focus of my research has been to develop tools for measuring mechanical forces at the protein level and apply these tools to gain mechanistic insights into fundamental biological processes, such as cellular and tissue homeostasis.  In this talk I will highlight recent work using nanobody-based force sensors to measure mechanical forces on nuclear lamins, and how these sensors can be used to study force transmission across other cytoskeletal structures.  I will also present work examining how forces are applied onto the nuclear pore complex and how these forces could regulate nuclear-cytosolic transport.  Lastly, I will discuss our work studying the role of mechanical forces in 3D epithelial structures, using MDCK cysts as a model system.