MIPS Faculty
Jeffrey Fredberg
Professor of Bioengineering and PhysiologyDepartment of Environmental Health
Building I
Room 313
665 Huntington Avenue
Boston MA 02115
phone: 617-432-0198
fax: 617 432 3468
Email: jfredber@hsph.harvard.edu
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Program in Molecular, Integrative and Physiological Sciences (MIPS)
- BSME, 1968, Tufts University Ph.D., 1973, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Our laboratory seeks to discover physical laws governing the abilities of the cytoskeleton to deform, contract, and remodel. These basic mechanical processes underlie a range of higher level phenomena in health and disease including many aspects of cancer, cardiovascular disease, malaria, and morphogenesis, but our major research emphasis is the role of these processes in airway narrowing in asthma. Trainees with backgrounds in engineering sciences, cell biology, or physics of soft condensed matter learn how to work side-by-side to pose new questions, invent new nanotechnologies, apply these technologies in novel experimental investigations, and analyze resulting data in terms of evolving mechanistic understanding of the physical properties of the living cell.
- Recent commentaries on our work:
Stamenovic D. Two regimes, maybe three? Nature Materials 5: 597-598, 2006.
Fashionable glass. C Seow, Nature, 305, 1172-1173, 2005.
New publications:
Universal physical responses to stretch in the living cell. X Trepat, L Deng, SS An, D Navajas, DJ Tschumperlin, WT Gerthoffer, JP Butler, JJ Fredberg. Nature, in press.
Fast and slow dynamics of the cytoskeleton. L Deng, X Trepat, JP. Butler, E Millet, KG Morgan, DA Weitz, JJ Fredberg. Nature Materials. 5: 636-640, 2006.
Bursac, P, G Lenormand, B Fabry, M Oliver, DA.Weitz, V Viasnoff, JP Butler, JJ Fredberg. Cytoskeletal remodeling and slow dynamics in the living cell. Nature Materials. 4, 557-561, 2005.
Fredberg, JJ, RD Kamm. Stress transmission in the lung: pathways from organ to molecule. Annual Review of Physiology. 68: 507-541, 2006.
Shore, SA, JJ Fredberg. Obesity, smooth muscle, and airway hyperresponsiveness. J Allergy and Clinical Immunology 115:925-7. 2005.
Lenormand, G., E Millet, B Fabry, JP Butler, and JJ Fredberg. Time-scale invariance of the creep compliance in living cells. Journal of The Royal Society (London), Interface, 1, 91-97, 2004.
Fabry B, GN Maksym, JP Butler, M Glogauer, D Navajas, N Taback, E Millet, JJ Fredberg. Time-scale and other invariants of integrative mechanical behavior of the living cell. Physical Review E. 68, 041914 (1-18), 2003.
Gunst, S, JJ Fredberg. The first three minutes: smooth muscle activation, cytoskeletal events and soft glasses. J. Appl. Physiol. 95: 413-425, 2003.
Wang, N, K Naruse, D Stamenovic, JJ Fredberg, SM Mijailovich, IM Tolic-Norrelykke, T Polte, R Mannix, DE Ingber Mechanical behavior in living cells consistent with the tensegrity model. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 98(14): 7765-70, 2001.
Fredberg, JJ. Frozen objects: small airways, big breaths and asthma. J. of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 106, 615-24, 2000.
- Micromechanics of Airway Smooth Muscle Cells in Culture (Canada, Spain, Germany, Israel)
- Physics in biology -- Physics in biology: soft cells. Nature magazine; Physics Portal, September, 2001.
- A cellular glass menagerie -- A cellular glass menagerie, Geoff Brumfiel, Physical Review Focus, American Physical Society, 24 September, 2001.
- Experiments Reveal How Cells Can Act Like Molten Glass -- Experiments Reveal How Cells Can Act Like Molten Glass. Kristin Leutwyler, Scientific American.
- Clear as glass -- Harvard Public Health Review
