diff --git a/public/index.html b/public/index.html index e0eaadc7907c3fc2c271daca5d0fdcebd1e281a9..f784319f64c82e266463e2e4bdde1f1c466abb5f 100644 --- a/public/index.html +++ b/public/index.html @@ -3,21 +3,18 @@ <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="GitLab Pages"> - <title>Plain HTML site using GitLab Pages!!</title> + <title>James Pelletier</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> </head> <body> - <div class="navbar"> - <a href="https://pages.gitlab.io/plain-html/">Plain HTML Example</a> - <a href="https://gitlab.com/pages/plain-html/">Repository</a> - <a href="https://gitlab.com/pages/">Other Examples</a> - </div> - - <h1>Hello World!</h1> - <p> - This is a simple plain-HTML website on GitLab Pages, without any fancy static site generator. + Greetings! I am a 6th year graduate student in the Center for Bits and Atoms and the Department of Physics at MIT. I am interested in how nonliving molecules work together to make living systems capable of metabolism, growth, replication, homeostasis, and adaptation. In particular, we are interested in "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches to synthetic cells. We hope to combine the most complex nonliving molecules, such as cytoplasm and chromosomes, to make the least complex living systems. + </p> + <p> + From the "top-down" we are investigating a <a href="http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/16.04.minimal.pdf">bacterium with a minimal genome</a>, in collaboration with John Glass of the <a href="http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/groups/synthetic-biology-bioenergy/">J. Craig Venter Institute</a> and Elizabeth Strychalski of the <a href="https://www.nist.gov/mml/bbd/microbial-metrology">National Institute of Standards and Technology</a>. For context, humans contain about 20000 genes, the bacterium <i>Escherichia coli</i> contains about 4000 genes, and the minimal cell contains just 473 genes. To our surprise, 149 of them do not have a known function, even though all are essential and the cell would die without any one of them. Therefore, we now know which genes a minimal cell contains, but we do not understand how the genes work. By imaging the growth and replication of single cells in microfluidic devices, we are now investigating <i>how</i> the minimal cell lives. + </p> + <p> + From the "bottom-up" we are reconstituting cellular phenomena in eukaryotic cytoplasmic extract from frog eggs, with <a href="https://mitchison.hms.harvard.edu/">Timothy Mitchison</a> and <a href="http://www.fakhrilab.com/">Nikta Fakhri</a>. For example, we are investigating geometrical and mechanical aspects of intracellular scaffolds such as microtubules, actin, and endoplasmic reticulum. I enjoy thinking about these cytoskeletal scaffolds as “LEGO soup,” composed of many different molecules that are constantly using energy to self-organize, assembling and disassembling to make different structures that can do different jobs at different times. </p> </body> -</html> - +</html> \ No newline at end of file