Dr Hauke Drechsler, Research Fellow, Biomedical Cell Biology Division, University of Warwick will present this seminar on Functional redundancy of mitotic spindle assembly factors'.

Abstract

 During mitosis, eucaryotic cells utilise a complex, spindle-shaped structure to segregate their genetic information into the two emerging daughter cells. This spindle is mainly made up of microtubules, microtubule associated proteins (MAPs) and microtubule-dependent motor proteins. All these components have to be coordinated in space and time to achieve a faithful setup of the mitotic spindle and thereby faithful chromosome segregation. Although past research presumably has identified most of the key players in spindle assembly and their activity has been put into a temporal context, knowledge about (functional) redundancy in this system is limited. Functional redundancy has a significant effect on therapy strategies that target druggable spindle assembly factors. For example; inhibition of the spindle motor Eg5, druggable by Monastrol and already used in clinical trials, was shown to be partially (functionally) compensated by the spindle motor Kif15.

Dr Drechsler's work aims to reveal and characterise new functional interactions among spindle assembly factors in detail. For this, a comprehensive approach combining in vitro and in vivo techniques was designed and set up.

Further information

All staff and students are welcome and there is no need to register in advance. If you have any queries, please contact Gemma Wild at G dot Wild at warwick dot ac dot uk

This research seminar is part of the Biomedical Cell Biology Seminar series, presented by the Division of Biomedical Cell Biology, Warwick Medical School.