Dinah Loerke

My overarching research interest is the field of cellular biomechanics: We are asking how we can combine experimental and computational imaging tools to elucidate how molecular mechanisms generate forces, and how these forces produce the macroscopically observable movement of tissues, cells, or organelles. Quantitative live-cell imaging and image analysis approaches are key elements of all of our current projects. Aside from some side projects related to membrane traffic and/or particle detection and tracking (an area which was the focus of my early career), my current primary interest is the cellular biomechanics of epithelial monolayers:

(1) Epithelial tissue dynamics during the early development of the fruit fly drosophila melanogaster, specifically the mechanics of cell intercalation during the elongation of the germband (which produces the elongation of the head-to-tail body axis of the fly embryo). Our work in this area is a collaboration with Prof. JT Blankenship, a fly geneticist in the DU Department of Biological Sciences.

(2) Epithelial architecture in the external vasculature of the sea squirt botryllus schlosseri, and mechanical changes during vascular aging. Our work in this area is a collaboration with Prof. Megan Valentine, Prof. Tony deTomaso (both University of California at Santa Barbara), and Prof. Adriana Dawes (Ohio State University).

Our work in these areas is inherently collaborative. In the last 25 years, the combination of new high-resolution microscopy techniques, together with advances in fluorescence biomarkers for live-cell imaging, has produced a wave of innovation (including multiple Nobel Prizes) and has enabled unprecedented insights into the molecular dynamics inside living cells. Computational image analysis techniques have been a critical resource in this field to process increasingly large datasets and extract meaningful mechanisms from multiplexed imaging data.