Biography

The molecular mechanisms that control the diverse ways that bacteria perform basic cellular tasks such as cell division or the regulation of DNA replication.  Eukaryotic cells all perform these tasks in essentially the same way, but different types of bacteria have radically different approaches to solving these challenges.  Previously, only a small handful of model bacteria have been used by scientists to understand bacterial cell processes.

Research Intrest

In my lab we explore the mechanisms behind a diverse group of bacteria with essentially different approaches to these molecular tasks.  This exciting area of research has recently opened up due to technological advances in DNA sequencing that free us from the confines of studying only a few model bacteria.

List of Publications
Rahn-Lee L, Merrikh H, Grossman AD, Losick R. The sporulation protein SirA inhibits the binding of DnaA to the origin of replication by contacting a patch of clustered amino acids. Journal of bacteriology. 2011 Mar 15;193(6):1302-7.
Rahn-Lee L, Gorbatyuk B, Skovgaard O, Losick R. The conserved sporulation protein YneE inhibits DNA replication in Bacillus subtilis. Journal of bacteriology. 2009 Jun 1;191(11):3736-9.
Le Sage D, Arai K, Glenn DR, DeVience SJ, Pham LM, Rahn-Lee L, Lukin MD, Yacoby A, Komeili A, Walsworth RL. Optical magnetic imaging of living cells. Nature. 2013 Apr 25;496(7446):486.
Banse AV, Chastanet A, Rahn-Lee L, Hobbs EC, Losick R. Parallel pathways of repression and antirepression governing the transition to stationary phase in Bacillus subtilis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2008 Oct 7;105(40):15547-52.

Global Scientific Words in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology