Speaker: Prof. Andrew Fry
Department of Biochemistry
University of Leicester
United Kingdom

HOST

Dr. Joan Roig, IRB Barcelona 

ABSTRACT

Centrosomes act as the major microtubule organizing centres in animal cells. As such they contribute to all aspects of cell biology that rely on the microtubule cytoskeleton, including determination of cell polarity, cell migration, intracellular trafficking, the segregation of chromosomes during mitosis asymmetric cell division and the assembly of cilia and flagella. The importance of the centrosome is highlighted by the fact that centrosome abnormalities contribute to a large and diverse range of human diseases from inherited developmental disorders to cancer. With this in mind, our first aim is to study how centrosomes are regulated through the cell cycle and what contribution individual centrosomeassociated proteins make to this regulation. We also have a particular interest in one family of centrosome-associated proteins, the NIMA-related kinases or Neks, as different members of this family have roles in centrosome separation mitotic spindle assembly, cytokinesis and ciliogenesis. Interestingly, some of these proteins show elevated expression in human cancer cells, whilst the mutation of others is proposed to be responsible for cilia-based kidney disease. The molecular details of what these proteins do in the normal and disease state though remain far from understood. Hence, our second aim is to provide mechanistic insight into the regulation and function of these protein kinases with the goal of determining whether they might make attractive targets for the development of new cancer therapeutics. 

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