Mary Elting
Bio
Dr. Elting’s interest in biophysics was first sparked as an undergraduate in the Weninger Lab in the NCSU physics department. She went on to complete her PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University in 2006, where she modularly engineered myosin molecular motors to explain how molecular structure supports mechanical force generation. As a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco, she next probed how biological macromolecules self-organize to generate force at the cellular, rather than molecular, length-scale in the mitotic spindle. Dr. Elting returned to the NCSU Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2017. She is also a member of the Quantitative and Computational Developmental Biology cluster through the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program. In collaboration with others in that cluster, she plans to apply her approaches to understanding how biological force scales not only from the molecular to the cellular level, but also between cells and across tissues.
Area(s) of Expertise
The broad question that drives Dr. Elting's research is how biological macromolecules - which are several orders of magnitude smaller than the cellular structures they build - self-organize to exert mechanical force and accomplish biological function. Through experiments both in the test tube and in live cells, her lab probes the self-assembly of cytoskeletal architectures in the mitotic spindle, the cellular machine that segregates chromosomes when cells divide. The task this machine must accomplish is critical to both human health and development, as mistakes in cell division lead to cancer, birth defects, and miscarriage. To address how the spindle is able to do its job so accurately and robustly, Dr. Elting's approach combines spinning-disk confocal microscopy, quantitative image analysis, mechanical perturbations in live cells via laser ablation, and bio-molecular engineering.
Publications
- Spindle biochemistry responds to compressive force from the nuclear envelope to tune spindle dynamics during closed mitosis , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2026)
- BPS2025 - Probing nuclear mechanics across cell division through protein diffusion , Biophysical Journal (2025)
- Cellularization in chytrid fungi uses distinct mechanisms from conventional cytokinesis and cellularization in animals and yeast , Current Biology (2025)
- Cellularization in chytrid fungi uses distinct mechanisms from conventional cytokinesis and cellularization in animals and yeast , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2025)
- Mechanical Coupling With the Nuclear Envelope Shapes the Schizosaccharomyces pombe Mitotic Spindle , Cytoskeleton (2025)
- Extended time, elevated expectations: The unappreciated downsides of pausing the tenure clock , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024)
- A unified model for the dynamics of ATP-independent ultrafast contraction , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023)
- Mitosis: Augmin-based bridges keep kinetochores in line , Current Biology (2023)
- A unified model for the dynamics of ATP-independent ultrafast contraction , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2022)
- Laser ablation reveals the impact of Cdc15p on the stiffness of the contractile ring , Molecular Biology of the Cell (2022)