Research

We can now determine or predict the atomic-resolution structure of almost anything, but we didn’t come here to collect structures. “Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” and our projects start with this optimism: structural biology at its best is discovery biology. Our efforts to resolve the chemistry driving life’s machinery will teach us how living matter works, how to improve and repair it, and, with some luck, will shed light on how living molecules emerged. The Frost lab studies how lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins co-assemble to govern the forms and functions of cells. We dissect the mechanisms that shape organelles and that, in turn, regulate gene expression and energy flows using genetics, biochemistry, light microscopy, and electron microscopy.

Our sources of research support are listed below in chronological order, starting with our lab’s opening in the summer of 2011. We wouldn’t be here without these funders and the vision they share with Mary Lasker (“If you think research is expensive, try disease”). The diversity in our sources of support and the range of problems we are investigating is part design, part serendipity. Our lab thrives on edge effects: innovations within ecosystems that evolved within the overlap between two or more habitats.