How do our cells keep time – or pause it – to shape their physiology? The Aydogan Lab investigates the fundamental principles of biological time control in animal development, metabolism, and disease. We study how biological time can be suspended, uncovering the molecular circuits and metabolic programs that underlie quiescence, senescence, and dormancy. As such, this exciting opportunity involves working along expert scientists at the interface of metabolism and biological time control, using techniques ranging from cell and molecular biology to bioinformatics, from advanced super-resolution microscopy to machine learning approaches.

Much of the collective understanding on biological time control has historically shaped around the progression of time (e.g. on cell cycle, circadian clock, segmentation clock, and on). Considerably less effort is devoted to research on the suspension of biological time such as cellular arrest, quiescence, senescence, dormancy, and suspended animation. Unravelling the molecular circuits and metabolic sustenance programs that underlie these cellular states holds significant biomedical promise, as they are implicated in phenomena as diverse as aging (e.g. senescence), cancer progression (e.g. post-metastatic dormancy), stress adaptation (e.g. suspended animation), and shaping tissue architecture (e.g. the quiescence in polyploidy). Understanding how biological time can be “paused” will also open the doors for investigating how cells decide between progressing vs. suspending their biological time.

Your role will be to assist an on-going project in this program of the Aydogan to help your day-to-day mentor (graduate student, postdoc or staff associate). You are expected to commit at least 10 hours a week with consistent commitment. In turn, you will gain research experience and partake in scholarly endeavors (such as data collection, analysis, interpretation, write up, and potentially even becoming an author on a paper).