Crossing Boundaries: Beyond Mapping the Genome
Collaboration breathes life into ‘Life on a Chip’
- Professors Mary Lidstrom and Deirdre Meldrum co-direct the Microscale Life Sciences Center.
View the 30-second TV spot. (700Kb, requires Quicktime).
Go to the Life on a Chip Web site.
Two years after being awarded the federal government’s first-ever Center of Excellence in Genomic Science, UW electrical engineering professor Deirdre Meldrum says her operation is ready to move into uncharted territory, going beyond the map of the human genome.
On tap for the coming year are projects that will integrate sensors into microfluidic devices with environmental control. That will allow researchers, for the first time, to measure multiple parameters such as pH, oxygen, ions and proteins in cells in real time.
Once that’s accomplished, Meldrum said, the team at the Microscale Life Sciences Center, or “Life on a Chip” for short, can begin unraveling the answers to important questions, such as how metabolism works and how infection in cells affects gene and protein expression.
“In the next few years, we expect to see new insights into biology at the single-cell level,” she said.
The key to making it work, according to co-director Mary Lidstrom, is fostering an interdisciplinary approach among a diverse group of scientists. The center, funded with a renewable $15 million five-year contract, involves 10 investigators from the UW departments of electrical engineering, bioengineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, microbiology, and laboratory science, and from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
“The greatest challenge is crossing disciplines and developing a common understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved in each project,” Lidstrom said, adding that the same factors that are making Seattle a bioscience powerhouse including a tradition of academic cross-pollination are working in the centers favor.
“We do have some unique strengths here,” she said.