Research Interests
My lab focuses on living systems' defining feature: their capacity to generate and sustain non-equilibrium dynamics, such as information processing and self-replication, and understanding how and why they ultimately lose this capacity (= death). By slowing or halting life processes and observing when this capacity collapses, we establish the limits to how long a system can retain this non-equilibrium capacity (NEC).
One of our approaches is gradually slowing all intracellular processes. We then ask whether a living system eventually loses viability or whether life-associated dynamics can persist arbitrarily slowly. Is there a measurable “speed of life,” and do physics and chemistry impose lower bounds on it? To address these questions, we drastically reduce the pace of cellular activity—for example, by driving budding yeast cells to extreme temperatures or into differentiation programs—and quantify the conditions under which their NEC degrades or collapses.
Another approach is suspending all cellular processes. We then ask whether a living system be brought to a complete halt and later resume life-associated dynamics? If so, under what conditions, and if not, what prevents reactivation? To address these questions, we study organisms whose observable dynamics have nearly or completely ceased—such as dormant yeast spores—to determine how long NEC can persist in seemingly lifeless states and what molecular or dynamical changes accompany the transition from a halted state to death.