Doug Natelson
Condensed-Matter Physicist, Rice University
Doug Natelson, 37, is the Benjamin Franklin of the microscopic world: He studies electronic properties at the atomic scale, where the overlap of classical and quantum physics gains importance. Natelson’s research involves complicated electron flow through single-molecule transistors, as well as organic semiconductors—carbon-based materials that are intended to replace silicon transistors in some electronic devices. This burgeoning technology holds the promise of making thin, ?flexible organic electronic devices a reality.
Unlike those who focus on the very large aspects of physics (superenergetic particle accelerators and massive black holes, for instance), Natelson is an evangelist for condensed matter and nanoscale, sharing his excitement on his popular blog (www.nanoscale.blogspot.com). “I’m an experimentalist at heart, playing with these fancy toys,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun to learn how to get down and really work at these scales.” —A. G.
Michael Elowitz
Biologist, Caltech
In 2000 Michael Elowitz, now 38, designed a genetic circuit that made E. coli blink in a culture dish. It was a huge moment, he says, recalling the cells’ behaving like fluorescent green Christmas lights. But the experiment was also a fortunate failure. Although the cells blinked, they did so at different rates. That variability among cells containing the same program kicked off a whole new line of experiments that Elowitz says are focused on “what it is that is making different cells do different things.”
Today Elowitz is examining the mechanisms by which genetically identical cells exploit and control random fluctuations in their own biochemical components in order to generate cell-type diversity. “Understanding the role of ‘noisy’ fluctuations can help us understand how bacteria diversify to survive,” Elowitz says, “as well as how cells specialize to build multicellular organisms.” —S. W.
Changhuei Yang
Electrical and Bioengineer, Caltech
As the performance ability of microscopes has increased, so has their size and cost—and that has had an impact on research. “There’s a mismatch between what those microscope systems can do and what some of the basic needs are,” says Changhuei Yang, 36.
By combining chip technology and microfluidics, Yang has created an inexpensive miniature microscope. About the size of “a hair on a bumblebee,” he says, with a circuit the size of a dime, it contains no optical lenses and works by allowing a small volume of fluid to flow across a microchip, which then sends images of the sample to a computer.
The microscopes can be built into a small handheld display—a device about the size of an iPod. Yang imagines physicians in the developing world using this tool to examine patients’ blood or the local water supply. “It would be a very rugged system that the clinician can just put into his pocket,” he says. —E. A.
Adam Reiss showed that the
universe's expansion is accelerating.
Photo: Monica Lopossay/Baltimore Sin
Adam Riess
Astrophysicist, Johns Hopkins University
Adam Riess turned astronomy on its head when he led a team of astronomers (the High-z Team) that discovered the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up. Scientists had accepted cosmic expansion since 1929, and prior to 1998 they assumed gravitational attraction would gradually bring it to a halt. But when Riess, 38, tried to use the data he uncovered from observing distant stellar explosions to reinforce this model, the numbers wouldn’t jibe. A few days later, he proved that his data made sense only in an accelerating universe.
The finding showed that an overwhelming repulsive force—fueled by a mysterious dark energy that makes up 72 percent of the universe—overcomes gravity to drive this cosmic acceleration. “It’s like throwing a ball up in the air and it keeps going up,” he says. Now armed with a $500,000 MacArthur fellowship he won in September, Riess is determined to uncover the secrets of this dark energy and its influence on the universe. —A. G.
Choanocytes, the feeding cells of sponges,
are part of Nicole King's study of early evolution.
Photo: Scott Nichols
Nicole King
Molecular and Cell Biologist, University of California at Berkeley
Nicole King, 38, is hunting for an answer to how the evolutionary leap occurred from single-celled organisms to plants, fungi, multicelled animals, and other forms of life. To find clues, she has trained her sights on choanoflagellates—a group of single-celled eukaryotes thought to be the closest living relatives of animals.
Sequencing the genome of one such organism, King and her colleagues found genes that code for pieces of the same proteins used for the binding of cells and communication between cells in animals —functions that would be unexpected in such an organism. King hypothesizes that proteins that the single-celled ancestors of animals used to interact with the extracellular environment—to capture bacterial prey by binding to their cell surface and to detect chemical signals—were later repurposed to enable cells to stick to and talk to each other. Interpreting the origins of multicellularity is key to understanding the origins of animals, King says, noting that her research “reaches back much further on the family tree than our common ancestors with other primates.” —Y. B.
