In mixtures of cytoskeletal filaments and molecular motors, local sliding motions can lead to large-scale collective motions. How do we integrate molecular-level knowledge to predict higher-order aspects of assembly and organization in these systems?
For a living cell to divide successfully, each daughter cell must inherit the correct genetic material. We are working to understanding how the microtubule-based mitotic spindle organizes and moves chromosomes.
Nuclear pore complexes form a selective filter that allows the passage of some molecules across the nuclear envelope, while blocking others. The reason that transport can be both fast and specific remains undetermined.
During cell division, mitotic spindles segregate duplicated chromosomes with high fidelity. Interactions between microtubules, motor proteins, and crosslinkers organize the spindle into a bipolar array, but how spindle bipolarity is established is not fully understood.
Biological filaments can serve as one-dimensional tracks on which motor proteins move. Asymmetric simple exclusion process models that have been applied to diverse examples of one-dimensional nonequilibrium transport.
The disordered C-terminal tails of tubulin are a primary site of tubulin regulation, which affect microtubule length dynamics and mechanical properties. Major questions remain about the molecular mechanism of tubulin CTT function and regulation.