Faculty

Jeff Gore
Assistant Professor of Physics

Name: Jeff Gore Title(s): Assistant Professor of Physics Email: gore@mit.edu Phone: (617) 715-4251 Assistant: Monica Wolf (617) 253-4829 Address: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Bldg. 13-2008 Cambridge, MA 02139 Related Links: Gore Laboratory Jeff Gore's Home Page Biophysics Seminar Series

Area of Physics:

Biophysics

Research Interests

Jeff Gore uses microbes such as yeast and bacteria to experimentally probe fundamental theories in evolutionary dynamics, systems biology, and quantitative ecology.

As a Pappalardo Fellow working together with Alexander van Oudenaarden, Jeff used sucrose metabolism in yeast as a model system to study the evolution of cooperation. The conditions required for the initiation and maintenance of cooperative behaviors is a classic problem in evolutionary biology. How can cooperators survive when they can be taken advantage of by "cheaters"? In the case of sucrose metabolism, Jeff found that cooperators can survive even in the presence of cheaters because the cooperators capture a small fraction (~1%) of the sugar they create before it is shared, thus making the interaction what game theorists call a snowdrift game.

Biographical Sketch

Jeff joined the MIT Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in January 2010, after spending the previous three years in the Department as a Pappalardo Fellow. He received his PhD from the Physics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005. His graduate research in single-molecule biophysics was done in the laboratory of Carlos Bustamante, focusing on the study of twist and torque in single molecules of DNA.

Selected Publications

• Snowdrift game dynamics and facultative cheating in yeast, Jeff Gore, Hyun Youk, and Alexander van Oudenaarden, Nature 459, 253 - 256 (2009).
• The yin and yang of nature [News & Views], Jeff Gore and Alexander van Oudenaarden, Nature 457, 271 - 272 (2009).
• DNA overwinds when stretched, Jeff Gore, Zev Bryant, Marcelo Nollmann, Mai U. Le, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, and Carlos Bustamante, Nature 442, 836 - 839 (2006)
• Mechanochemical analysis of DNA gyrase using rotor bead tracking, Jeff Gore, Zev Bryant, Michael D. Stone, Marcelo Nollmann, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, and Carlos Bustamante, Nature 439, 100 - 104 (2006).
• Structural transitions and elasticity from torque measurements on DNA, Zev Bryant, Michael D. Stone, Jeff Gore, Steven B. Smith, Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, Carlos Bustamante, Nature 424, 338 (2003).

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