Experimental studies were led by Erika Ding, with Takashi Yokokura conducting hugely insightful SCFT modeling under Prof. Rui Wang's guidance. Erika and Takashi are incredibly talented and motivated ChemE PhD students ... if you see one or both in a future faculty search, give them a close look!

Very briefly, we show that despite M's smaller size, it populates the outer reaches of the brush at physiol ionic strength bc a key portion of the protein has a relatively segregated charge distribution. As a result M behaves like a polyelectrolyte, with charge repulsion driving chain expansion.

NFs are IFs composed of 3 subunits (light, medium, heavy a.k.a. L, M & H) that co-assemble into bottlebrush-like structures. The C terminal IDRs of M and H (and to a lesser extent L) form the "bristles" of the brush and have been long presumed to mediate interactions between adjacent NFs.

Excited to share our new paper in @PNASNews on mixed, reconstituted neurofilaments (NFs)! This work was led by ChemE PhD student Erika Ding and done in collab w Prof. Rui Wang and ChemE PhD student Takashi Yokokura here at Berkeley pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

What a pleasure visiting the iconic @notredame.bsky.social to give the AME/BioE seminar! Exciting to hear about the push to build in Bioengineering & Life Sciences, including some brilliant recent faculty recruitments and new lab space. Many thanks to @dhpgroup.bsky.social and colleagues ☘️

We show that VE matrices support a special leader follower mode of invasion in which leader cells use hyaluronidases to pave paths, with followers then exploit. Invasive morphologies closely resemble those previousy seen by intravital imaging