Professor Raymond E. Goldstein FRS

Interim Director of the G.K. Batchelor Laboratory

Fellow of Churchill College

@goldlabUC

Our research group focuses on understanding nonequilibrium phenomena in the natural world, with particular emphasis on biological physics. We strive for a holistic approach in which theory and experiment seamlessly coexist, in the best tradition of DAMTP. The group include theoretical and experimental physicists, chemists, applied mathematicians and biologists, and we collaborate broadly with scientists from other departments in Cambridge and beyond.
We are grateful to Wellcome and the Leverhulme Trust for their generous funding of our current research.

Our current research involves physical aspects of multicellularity, with a focus on structure and developmental processes of two classes of model organisms: green algae and choanoflagellates. We use the green algae to understand physical principles of extracellular matrix (ECM) generation, addressing a fundamental question in biology: How do cells make structures external to themselves in robust and accurate manner? This research involves the use of a number of different species in the Volvocine lineage, including genetically engineered mutants of Volvox in which YFP is fused to a particular protein in the ECM (done collaboratively with the group of Armin Hallmann in Bielefeld, Germany). This work reveals how stochasticity of ECM production at the single-cell level coexists with global (shape) regularity at the scale of the whole organism.

A second main thrust centres the properties of choanoflagellates, uni- and multicellular organisms that are the closest living relatives of animals. The recently discovered species C. flexa exists as a raft of cells that exhibits remarkable shape transformation under changes in light or ambient chemistry. Building on our earlier theoretical analysis of the biomechanics of this process we are now working to understand such processes more deeply through experiments. These involve high-resolution imaging of the self-assembly process by which the rafts assemble, tracking of their three-dimensional swimming trajectories, and quantifying photokinesis.

Our research is closely related to that of other fluid dynamicists in DAMTP and the G.K. Batchelor Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.