Christopher Obara, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Christopher Obara, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research Interests
Our laboratory develops custom microscopy and advanced imaging pipelines to try to solve fundamental questions in biophysics, cell biology, and neuroscience. We are especially interested in the integration of approaches that bridge spatial and temporal scales. By actively developing new technologies at the level of probe, microscope, and analysis pipelines, we can bring the next generation of cutting-edge techniques to questions that range from the atomic scale of protein structures all the way up to physicians actively seeing patients in the clinic. Currently, we are focused on understanding the complex signaling and communication that happens between organelles inside of single human cells in response to their environment. By carefully calibrating our observations across diverse systems and scales, we can make fundamental progress into understanding the way humans develop, live, and age through conditions of health and disease.
Selected Publications
Obara CJ*, Nixon-Abell J*, Moore AS, Riccio F, Hoffman DP, Shtengel G, Xu CS, Schaefer K, Pasolli HA, Masson JB, Hess HF, Calderon CP, Blackstone C, Lippincott-Schwartz J. Nature, 2024 Feb;626(7997):169-176. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06956-y.
Obara CJ, Moore AS, Lippincott-Schwartz J. Structural Diversity within the Endoplasmic Reticulum—From the Microscale to the Nanoscale. CSH Perspectives in Biology, 2023 Jun 1;15(6). doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a041259.
Sun Y*, Yu Z*, Obara CJ, Mittal K, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Koslover EF. Unraveling trajectories of diffusive particles on networks. Phys Rev Research 2022 Jun 6; 4(2): 023182.
Zheng P, Obara CJ, Szczesna E, Nixon-Abell J, Mahalingan KK, Roll-Mecak A, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Blackstone C. ER proteins decipher the tubulin code to regulate organelle distribution. Nature 2022 Mar 23; 601, 132-138.
Moore AS, Coscia SM, Simpson CL, Ortega FE, Wait EC, Heddleston JM, Nirschl, JJ, Obara CJ, Guedes-Dias P, Boecker CA, Chew TL, Theriot JA, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Holzbaur ELF. Actin cables and comet tails organize mitochondrial networks in mitosis. Nature 2021 Mar 3; 591 (7851), 659-664.
Speiser A, Müller LR, Hoess P, Matti U, Obara CJ, Legant ER, Kreshuk A, Macke JH, Ries J, Turaga SC. Deep learning enables fast and dense single molecule localization with high accuracy. Nature Methods 2021 Sep 3; 18, 1082-1090.
Nixon-Abell J*, Obara CJ*, Weigel AV*, Li D, Legant WR, Xu CS, Pasolli HA, Harvey K, Hess HF, Betzig E, Blackstone C, Lippincott-Schwartz J. Increased spatiotemporal resolution reveals highly dynamic dense tubular matrices in the peripheral ER. Science 2016 Oct 28; 354(6311).