Presentation of the lab
 |
| Lea-Laetitia Pontani, head of the LJP |
All the activities of the LJP come within physics at the interface with biology and medicine. A large part of our research projects aims at exploring the response of a biological system to external perturbations.
On the one hand, we search for realizing new physico-chemical, mechanical systems the behaviours of which could offer some analogies with the biological systems — an approach that we could qualify of bio-inspired, allowing to go back and forth from the alive to the artificial systems, either to develop new concepts or to improve our understanding of given biological mechanisms by trying to reproduce them artificially. In line with this, we are developing projects which concern the solid friction in relation with the mechanics of the sense of touch or membrane biophysics in relation with intracellular traffic issues.
On the other hand, we have a significant interest in developing new experimental approaches, in particular in the field of optics and microfabrication techniques with a special attention to techniques from microelectronics field enabling manufacturing of microstructures (mainly passive, but which could also turn to MEMS's active microstructures), the characteristic sizes of which go from the micron to a few hundred microns. These approaches allow us to probe the properties of complex biological systems at different scales. This includes researches on zebra neurobiology and on microorganisms examined from the single cell to the organized community scale.
Eventually, we decided from the very beginning of Laboratoire Jean Perrin creation, to include a theoretical component to our researches. This is crucial both for scientific animation and for supporting experimenter modelling activities. Theoreticians of the lab develop new concepts based on the daily interaction with the experimenters.
