Mathematical biologist Mariel Vazquez studies shapes' ability to transform.
Of course, the twisted strands within our bodies carry much higher stakes than even the most chaotic audio cable. Cells would die if they couldn’t efficiently store these helixes in tight quarters while still being able to access their genetic information. Figuring out how they manage to do so is one of the knotty problems Vazquez’s interdisciplinary lab is designed to tackle, often with an eye toward practical applications like novel cancer treatments.
Vazquez came to think of gene-packed cells as a topological problem. After all, she explains, “It all boils down to the fact that DNA is a very long chain that fits into a very tiny environment.” That revelation turned into a Ph.D. and a postdoc, and eventually a role as a professor of mathematics, microbiology, and molecular genetics at the University of California, Davis.
Over the past two decades, her work has tapped topological concepts to make core discoveries about how our bodies keep track of DNA strands. For example, mathematicians
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