Ned S. Wingreen

About

Ned S. Wingreen is a Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and is affiliated with the Lewis-Sigler Institute. He is involved with the Center for the Physics of Biological Function, an NSF Physics Frontier Center. His research focuses on the biophysics of biological systems, contributing to the understanding of the physical principles underlying biological functions. Wingreen's work is characterized by a strong interdisciplinary approach, integrating physics and biology to explore complex biological phenomena.

Research topics

• Biology
• Physics
• Biophysics
• Chemical physics
• Cell biology
• Genetics
• Chemistry
• Ecology
• Materials science
• Mechanics

Selected publications

• Chromatin mechanics dictates subdiffusion and coarsening dynamics of embedded condensates

  Nature Physics · 2021 · 168 citations

  DOI

• Cell position fates and collective fountain flow in bacterial biofilms revealed by light-sheet microscopy

  Science · 2020 · 159 citations

  It is unknown how spatial trajectories of individual cells and the collective motions of many cells drive biofilm expansion. We developed dual-view light-sheet microscopy to investigate the dynamics of biofilm development from a founder cell to a mature three-dimensional community. Tracking of individual cells revealed two distinct fates: one set of biofilm cells expanded ballistically outward, while the other became trapped at the substrate. A collective fountain-like flow transported cells to…

  DOI

• Nonuniform growth and surface friction determine bacterial biofilm morphology on soft substrates

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 150 citations

  biofilms grown on agar substrates in which the spatiotemporal morphological patterns were altered by varying the agar concentration. Expanding biofilms are initially flat but later undergo a mechanical instability and become wrinkled. To gain mechanistic insights into this dynamic pattern-formation process, we developed a model that considers diffusion of nutrients and their uptake by bacteria, bacterial growth/biofilm matrix production, mechanical deformation of both the biofilm and the substra…

  DOI

• Modelling the pyrenoid-based CO2-concentrating mechanism provides insights into its operating principles and a roadmap for its engineering into crops

  Nature Plants · 2022 · 118 citations

  fixed, thereby offering a framework to guide the engineering of a PCCM into land plants.

  DOI

• Morphological instability and roughening of growing 3D bacterial colonies

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 105 citations

  How do growing bacterial colonies get their shapes? While colony morphogenesis is well studied in two dimensions, many bacteria grow as large colonies in three-dimensional (3D) environments, such as gels and tissues in the body or subsurface soils and sediments. Here, we describe the morphodynamics of large colonies of bacteria growing in three dimensions. Using experiments in transparent 3D granular hydrogel matrices, we show that dense colonies of four different species of bacteria generically…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01GM073186

  NIH · $1.1M · 2011

• Learning principles from the pyrenoid, a phase-separated organelle

  NIH · $1.0M · 2021–2025

• Learning principles from the pyrenoid, a phase-separated organelle

  NIH · $519k · 2021–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Yigal Meir

  98 shared

• Bonnie L. Bassler

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  91 shared

• Yaojun Zhang

  Johns Hopkins University

  42 shared

• Howard A. Stone

  38 shared

• Chao Tang

  Center for Life Sciences

  34 shared

• Clifford P. Brangwynne

  Princeton University

  32 shared

• Ranjan Mukhopadhyay

  30 shared

• Kerwyn Casey Huang

  Stanford Medicine

  29 shared

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Eric F. Wieschaush-109
• Robert Austinh-95
• David W. Tankh-85