Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology (CMCB), Coventry, United Kingdom

Dr. Darius Köster received his PhD at the Institut Curie in Paris under the supervision of Drs. Christophe Lamaze, Pierre Nassoy. His PhD focused on the roles of caveolae in protecting the cell membrane from mechanical stresses. Funded by the AXA Research Fellowship and then a National Centre for Biological Sciences Post-Doctoral Fellow, he moved to the laboratory of Prof. Satyajit Mayor where he designed minimal systems to study the effect of actin and myosin dynamics on cell membrane organisation. After a brief stint at Warwick Medical School with Prof. Mohan Balasubramanian, he became QBP Assistant Professor and part of the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology.

Dr. Köster’s laboratory focusses on the effects of mechanical forces in remodeling the plasma membrane and the underlying actin cortex. Tissue integrity in a multicellular organism depends on neighboring cells forming contacts with each other. Concomitantly, during development, cells undergo programmed migration and must establish contacts with other cells in the new environment. Besides molecular and biochemical signals, mechanical cues have been found to play a critical role in both these processes, and their disruption has been linked to several human diseases, including cancer. Despite this, our understanding of how mechanical forces shape the cell in its tissutal context or how cellular mechanosensing is carried out, is relatively limited.

To address these questions, the Köster laboratory uses a combination of in vitro methods based on reconstituted, minimal systems of the cell membrane-cortex composite as well as live cells in culture. It also combines high resolution spatial and temporal microscopy with controlled mechanical manipulations, biochemical alterations, quantitative analysis and theoretical modelling to understand the molecular basis of mechanosensing and how cells respond to changes in external mechanical forces. Ultimately, these studies would help define the role that mechanical forces play in maintaining the integrity of tissues and enable their manipulations in disease conditions.