Research Interests

Centrioles, Centrosomes, mitosis, cell cycle, Drosophila

A key feature of all living things is their ability to assemble complicated structures using dilute building blocks present in the cell. How cells achieve this remarkable feat of bioengineering is largely unknown. Centrosomes are major microtubule (MT) organising centres and important signalling hubs in many cells. Centrosomes comprise a central pair of highly organised centrioles, surrounded by a more amorphous matrix of pericentriolar material (PCM). They are an excellent model for studying organelle biogenesis as they are built from 10s-100s of copies of several hundred different types of protein yet, like the DNA, they precisely duplicate once per cell cycle. We use the early Drosophila embryo as a model to try to understand how cells build centrioles and PCM, as the nuclei and centrosomes in these syncytial embryos proceed through 13 rounds of rapid, near synchronous, division. This allows us to follow the assembly of thousands of centrosomes at a spatial and temporal resolution that is simply not possible in any other system.