Prof. Uri Alon
Systems biology and physics of behavior
Understanding the protein circuits that perform computations within the cell is a central problem in biology. In physics, cells offer the challenge of understanding the collective behavior of interacting molecular machines designed to operate with remarkable precision under strong biological constraints. Our lab studies biological circuits, and applies the principles we discover also to understand dynamics on a different scale, that of human interactions.
- Network motifs: basic interaction patterns that recur throughout biological networks, much more often than in random networks
- Development of dynamic proteomics, a system for monitoring the position and amounts of endogenous proteins in individual living human cells
- We study evolution when multiple objectives are at play. When a biological system needs to perform more than one task, it faces a fundamental tradeoff, which leads to surprising simplicity in the range of phenotypes
- Theatre lab: we use concepts from improvisation theatre, and tools from physics and computer science to study basic principles of human interactions
