Michael Rubinstein, PhD
Aleksandar S. Vesic Distinguished Professor
Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Pratt School of Engineering
My research is in the field of soft matter physics. In the area of quantitative living systems I am currently involved in two main projects:
(i) the structure and function of the airway surface layer of lungs in health and disease consisting of two layers - periciliary layer containing dense brush of mucin glycoproteins and the mucus layer the properties of which are dominated by the adsorbed biomolecules at the air surface;
(ii) the active loop extrusion dynamics of chromatin by cohesins during interphase forces it into dense conformation with anomalously high fractal dimension of four. This allows gene promoters and their regulatory elements to frequently contact each other within topologically associated domains (TADs) while suppressing spatial overlap between different TADs and significantly suppressing entanglements.
