Elting Lab

The Elting Lab combines approaches from physics, biology, and engineering to ask how biological molecules self-assemble into cellular-scale machinery that transduces force and performs mechanical functions.

Publications

Spindle biochemistry responds to compressive force from the nuclear envelope to tune spindle dynamics during closed mitosis. Mahoney, Needham, Hakeem, Begley Pagán Medina, Elting, biorXiv 2026.

Posted 15 Jan 2026

Cellularization in chythrid fungi uses distinct mechanisms from conventional cytokinesis and cellularization in animals and yeast. Medina, Elting, and Fritz-Laylin, Current Biology, 2025.

Posted 15 Dec 2025

Mechanical Coupling With the Nuclear Envelope Shapes the Schizosaccharomyces pombe Mitotic Spindle. Begley, Mahoney, Medina, Zareiesfandabadi, Rapp, Tirfe, LeBlanc, Betterton, and Elting, Cytoskeleton 2025.

Posted 10 May 2025

Three-dimensional cellularization in chytrid fungi uses distinct mechanisms from those driving one- and two-dimensional cytokinesis in animals and yeast. Medina, Elting, and Fritz-Laylin, biorXiv 2025.

Posted 29 Mar 2025

Fishnet mesh of centrin-Sfi1 drives ultrafast calcium-activated contraction of the giant cell Spirostomum ambiguum. Lannan, Floyd, Xu, Yan, Marshall, Vaikuntanathan, Dinner, Honts, Bhamla, and Elting, bioRxiv 2024.

Posted 7 Nov 2024

A unified model for the dynamics of ATP-independent ultrafast contraction. Floyd, Molines, Lei, Honts, Chang, Elting†, Vaikuntanathan†, Dinner†, and Bhamla†, PNAS 2023.

Posted 12 Jun 2023

News

Taylor's new preprint posted!

Posted 27 Jan 2026

Joe defended!

Posted 5 Jan 2026

Spiro team paper published on the cover of PNAS

Posted 12 Jun 2023

New NSF grant to study Spirostomum contraction

Posted 18 May 2023

Mary was promoted with tenure!

Posted 21 Apr 2023

Marc graduated!

Posted 17 Dec 2022

Open positions!

Posted 6 Apr 2022

Mohamed and Kim's paper is published!

Posted 5 Apr 2022