Shankar Mukherji

Physicist Mukherji awarded $1.97 million to study cellular design

Cells are the basic units of structure and function in all forms of life on Earth, from humans and animals to yeasts and bacteria. But a cell itself is made up of even smaller working pieces called organelles. Understanding how a cell commits resources to building new parts — and eventually divides into two cells — is the focus of a new grant for physicist Shankar Mukherji of Washington University in St. Louis.