Funded by the QMUL Westfield Fund for Enhancing the Student Experience
Research
Research Interests:
Regulation of Chromosome Segregation in Meiosis
My research investigates the regulation of chromosome segregation in meiosis using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model eukaryotic organism.
My postdoctoral work identified the budding yeast Polo-like kinase, Cdc5, as a critical mediator of the meiosis I chromosome segregation pattern (Clyne et al., Nature Cell Biology 2003). Current work combines genetic and cell biological methods available in this experimental system to investigate the role of post-translational modifications in the regulation of meiosis. This includes analysis of novel roles and regulatory mechanisms of the budding yeast Polo-like kinase in meiosis (Iacovella et al., Cell Cycle 2010).
My group has also described the first quantitative proteomic analyses of yeast meiosis (Grassl et al., Proteomics 2010; Scaife et al., Proteomics 2010). Through this work, we constructed the first databases of protein expression patterns in meiosis. We also completed a study to optimise methods for yeast 2-DE analysis (Grassl et al., Proteomics 2009), which have been shown to be applicable to other types of biological samples.
An important future goal will be to extend our findings on the mechanisms of yeast meiosis to that of mammals.
