Accurate spindle positioning is essential for error-free cell division. The one-cell Caenorhabditis elegans embryo has proven instrumental for dissecting mechanisms governing spindle positioning. Despite important progress, how the cortical forces that act ...
The two centrosomes present at the onset of mitosis must separate in a timely and accurate fashion to ensure proper bipolar spindle assembly. The minus-end-directed motor dynein plays a pivotal role in centrosome separation, but the underlying mechanisms r ...
Cell migration is a fundamental property of all animal cells which is involved in processes such as embryogenesis, immune response, tissue regeneration and cancer metastasis. Directional migration requires cell polarization which could happen in response t ...
The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamical protein network that plays a central role in numerous cellular physiological processes, and is traditionally divided into three components according to its chemical composition, i.e. actin, tubulin and intermediate fi ...
Alzheimer s disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by strong cognitive impairment and memory loss. These symptoms are caused by neuronal death, induced by two pathological hallmarks: extracellular senile plaques composed of a ...
The significant gap between quantitative and qualitative understanding of cytoskeletal function is a pressing problem; microscopy and labeling techniques have improved qualitative investigations of localized cytoskeleton behavior, whereas quantitative anal ...
The septation initiation network (SIN) regulates aspects of cell growth and division in Schizosaccharomyces pombe and is essential for cytokinesis. Insufficient signalling results in improper assembly of the contractile ring and failure of cytokinesis, gen ...
Cell polarity underlies many aspects of metazoan development and homeostasis, and relies notably on a set of PAR proteins located at the cell cortex. How these proteins interact in space and time remains incompletely understood. We performed a quantitative ...
Cell-cell fusion is essential for fertilization. For fusion of walled cells, the cell wall must be degraded at a precise location but maintained in surrounding regions to protect against lysis. In fission yeast cells, the formin Fus1, which nucleates linea ...
Many cellular processes require or depend on mechanical feedback from the cell's micro-environment. For example, the local organization of the actin cytoskeleton is known to adapt to the physical properties of the extracellular matrix. To gain better under ...
