Philippe Cluzel

Philippe Cluzel

Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Applied Physics

Harvard University
NorthWest Building, Room 435.10
52 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-384-9447
Email: cluzel@mcb.harvard.edu

Website:

http://labs.mcb.harvard.edu/Cluzel
Lab Size: Between 5 and 10

Summary

The Cluzel laboratory draws together a range of scientific disciplines and skills in order to tackle biological problems at the systems level. We use real-time systems analysis to investigate how single cells respond to information in their environment. Our systems of interest include multi-drug resistance in E. coli and S. aureus, transcriptional dynamics of flagellar genes in bacteria, and degeneracy in the genetic code. Our research offers interdisciplinary training opportunities for students with either a biological or physical sciences background. Techniques in the lab come mainly from microbiology, molecular biology, statistical physics, and computational biology; these include fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, microfluidics, bacterial genetics, time-resolved fluorescence, video microscopy, and protein engineering.

Publications

Wood K., Nishida S., Sontag E.D., and Cluzel P. (2012) Mechanism-independent method for predicting response to multidrug combinations in bacteria. PNAS 109: 12254-9.

Moffitt J., Lee J.B., and Cluzel P. (2012) The single-cell chemostat: an agarose-based, microfluidic device for high-throughput, single-cell studies of bacteria and bacterial communities. Lab on a Chip 12: 1487-1494.

Park H., Oikonomou P., Guet C.C., and Cluzel P. (2011) Noise underlies switching behavior of the bacterial flagellum. Biophysical Journal 101: 2336-40.

Park H., Pontius W., Guet C.C., Marko J.F., Emonet T. and Cluzel P. (2010) Interdependence of behavioural variability and response to small stimuli in bacteria. Nature: 468: 819-23.

Guet C., Bruneaux L., Min T.L., Siegal-Gaskins D., Figueroa I., Emonet T. and Cluzel P. (2008) Minimally invasive determination of mRNA concentration in single living bacteria. Nucleic Acids Research, 36:e73.