Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Allen Liu received a B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry (Honors) from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, in 2001. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics in 2007 from the University of California-Berkeley and received his post-doctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute-La Jolla. He started his group in 2012, and he is currently an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biophysics at the University of Michigan. His current research interests lie in cellular mechanotransduction and uses tools from quantitative cell biology, synthetic biology, biophysics, and microfluidics. He is a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Young Innovator by Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE), a Rising Star from CMBE-BMES, and Future of Biophysics Burroughs Wellcome Fund Symposium speaker. He is a recipient of the Endeavour Executive Fellowship (Australia) and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researcher (Germany).
Photopatterning of actin filament structures.
Nano letters Apr, 2005 | Pubmed ID: 15826098
Actin polymerization serves as a membrane domain switch in model lipid bilayers.
Biophysical journal Dec, 2006 | Pubmed ID: 16963509
Differential force microscope for long time-scale biophysical measurements.
The Review of scientific instruments Apr, 2007 | Pubmed ID: 17477674
Unilamellar vesicle formation and encapsulation by microfluidic jetting.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Mar, 2008 | Pubmed ID: 18353990
Biology under construction: in vitro reconstitution of cellular function.
Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology Sep, 2009 | Pubmed ID: 19672276
Global and local regulation of clathrin-coated pit dynamics detected on patterned substrates.
Biophysical journal Aug, 2009 | Pubmed ID: 19686651
Membrane-induced bundling of actin filaments.
Nature physics Aug, 2008 | Pubmed ID: 19746192
Multivalent display and receptor-mediated endocytosis of transferrin on virus-like particles.
Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology Jun, 2010 | Pubmed ID: 20455239
Local clustering of transferrin receptors promotes clathrin-coated pit initiation.
The Journal of cell biology Dec, 2010 | Pubmed ID: 21187331
Cofactoring and dimerization of proteinase-activated receptors.
Pharmacological reviews , 2013 | Pubmed ID: 24064459
Uniaxial cell stretching device for live-cell imaging of mechanosensitive cellular functions.
The Review of scientific instruments Nov, 2013 | Pubmed ID: 24289415
A microfluidic pipette array for mechanophenotyping of cancer cells and mechanical gating of mechanosensitive channels.
Lab on a chip Jan, 2015 | Pubmed ID: 25361042
The Application of Micropipette Aspiration in Molecular Mechanics of Single Cells.
Journal of nanotechnology in engineering and medicine Nov, 2014 | Pubmed ID: 26155329
Cell spreading area regulates clathrin-coated pit dynamics on micropatterned substrate.
Integrative biology : quantitative biosciences from nano to macro Sep, 2015 | Pubmed ID: 26205141
Biophysical Tools for Cellular and Subcellular Mechanical Actuation of Cell Signaling.
Biophysical journal Sep, 2016 | Pubmed ID: 27456131
New advances in probing cell-extracellular matrix interactions.
Integrative biology : quantitative biosciences from nano to macro 05, 2017 | Pubmed ID: 28352896
Notch signaling in regulating angiogenesis in a 3D biomimetic environment.
Lab on a chip May, 2017 | Pubmed ID: 28470301
Cell-sized mechanosensitive and biosensing compartment programmed with DNA.
Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) Jun, 2017 | Pubmed ID: 28524182
Loss of PTEN promotes formation of signaling-capable clathrin-coated pits.
Journal of cell science 04, 2018 | Pubmed ID: 29588397
A synthetic biology platform for the reconstitution and mechanistic dissection of LINC complex assembly.
Journal of cell science 10, 2018 | Pubmed ID: 30262467
Encapsulation of the cytoskeleton: towards mimicking the mechanics of a cell.
Soft matter Oct, 2019 | Pubmed ID: 31621750
The New Age of Cell-Free Biology.
Annual review of biomedical engineering 06, 2020 | Pubmed ID: 32151150
In search of a novel chassis material for synthetic cells: emergence of synthetic peptide compartment.
Soft matter Dec, 2020 | Pubmed ID: 33179713
Complimentary action of structured and unstructured domains of epsin supports clathrin-mediated endocytosis at high tension.
Communications biology 12, 2020 | Pubmed ID: 33293652
β-arrestin mediates communication between plasma membrane and intracellular GPCRs to regulate signaling.
Communications biology 12, 2020 | Pubmed ID: 33339901
Actin crosslinker competition and sorting drive emergent GUV size-dependent actin network architecture.
Communications biology 09, 2021 | Pubmed ID: 34584211
Facile formation of giant elastin-like polypeptide vesicles as synthetic cells.
Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) Dec, 2021 | Pubmed ID: 34816831
Compression enhances invasive phenotype and matrix degradation of breast Cancer cells via Piezo1 activation.
BMC molecular and cell biology Jan, 2022 | Pubmed ID: 34979904
In Vitro Reconstitution Platforms of Mammalian Cell-Free Expressed Membrane Proteins.
Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) , 2022 | Pubmed ID: 34985740
The living interface between synthetic biology and biomaterial design.
Nature materials Apr, 2022 | Pubmed ID: 35361951
Differential regulation of GUV mechanics via actin network architectures.
Biophysical journal Jun, 2023 | Pubmed ID: 36397672
Calcium-triggered DNA-mediated membrane fusion in synthetic cells.
Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) Jul, 2023 | Pubmed ID: 37365952
Development of mechanosensitive synthetic cells for biomedical applications.
SLAS technology Jun, 2023 | Pubmed ID: 37385542
A Mammalian-Based Synthetic Biology Toolbox to Engineer Membrane-Membrane Interfaces.
Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) , 2024 | Pubmed ID: 38441757
Christopher W. Coyne1,
Karan Patel1,
Johanna Heureaux1,
Jeanne Stachowiak3,
Daniel A. Fletcher4,5,
Allen P. Liu1,2
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan,
2Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan,
3Department of Biomedical Engineering, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas at Austin,
4Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley,
5Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
2John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University,
3Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry,
4Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
5Department of Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
6Cellular and Molecular Biology Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1Neuroscience Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
2Cellular and Molecular Biology Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
3Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
4Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
5Department of Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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