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Steve Royle

Technical Summary

We are interested in two processes fundamental to eukaryotic cellular life: mitosis and membrane trafficking. The lab are working to understand how these processes operate at the molecular level in the hope of identifying new strategies to prevent tumour formation and propagation in cancer and to inhibit cellular infection.

Image1The mitotic spindle is a tiny machine whose purpose is to accurately segregate the chromosomes during cell division. We are trying to understand how the microtubules of the mitotic spindle are stabilised by non-motor proteins, and how stability is altered in cancer.

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is the main route of entry into mammalian cells and it controls numerous cellular processes from cell motility and signalling to synaptic transmission and organelle identity. We are trying to understand the molecular mechanisms of this process, and how it is controlled by the cell cycle.

Selected publications:

Larocque, G., La-Borde, P.J., Clarke, N.I., Carter, N.J. & Royle, S.J. (2019) Tumor Protein D54 defines a new class of intracellular transport vesicles. J. Cell Biol., doi: 10.1083/jcb.201812044.

Clarke, N.I. & Royle, S.J. (2018) FerriTag is a new genetically-encoded inducible tag for correlative light-electron microscopy. Nat. Commun., 9: 2604. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04993-0.

Wood, L.A., Larocque, G., Clarke, N.I., Sarkar, S. & Royle, S.J. (2017) New tools for “hot-wiring” clathrin-mediated endocytosis with temporal and spatial precision. J. Cell Biol., 216: 4351-65. doi: 10.1083/jcb.201702188

Nixon*, F.M., Honnor*, T.R., Clarke, N.I., Starling, G.P., Beckett, A.J., Johansen, A.M., Brettschneider, J.A., Prior, I.A. & Royle, S.J. (2017) Microtubule organization within mitotic spindles revealed by serial block face scanning electron microscopy and image analysis. J. Cell Sci., 130: 1845-55. doi: 10.1242/jcs.203877