Jessica Lynn Feldman
Stanford University, CA·Biology
As cells take on specialized jobs, they rebuild their internal skeleton. Microtubules are hollow protein filaments that give cells shape, polarity and internal transport routes.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
microtubules
cytoskeleton
microtubule organizing center
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Build proximity maps of non-centrosomal microtubule organizing centers across C. elegans cell types, using the proteins VAB-10B and WDR-62 as handles, to learn how these sites first arise during differentiation.
- Uncover how the protein SPD-5 transforms the centrosome into a microtubule organizing center, and test what happens to worm tissues when the centrosome is not switched off.
- Determine how microtubules assemble onto one another to form doublet microtubules, the paired filaments of cilia, using new genetic tools in C. elegans.
More about the research
They are organized from sites called microtubule organizing centers (MTOCs). During cell division the main MTOC is the centrosome. In differentiated cells, organizing duty shifts to other places: the top surface of epithelial cells, the branches of neurons, and the nuclear envelope of muscle cells. At the same time the centrosome is switched off. Failure to switch off the centrosome is common in epithelial cancers and linked to invasive behavior. Even so, how this reorganization happens is poorly understood.
Why it matters
Defects in the microtubule skeleton are linked to a growing number of birth defects, such as microcephaly, and to human cancers, including epithelial cancers in which the centrosome fails to switch off. Knowing how cells organize microtubules during differentiation could give therapeutic insight into these conditions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tarun M. Kapoor
Rockefeller University, NY·Biochemistry
Determine the functions of different AAA mechanoenzymes (force-generating proteins powered by ATP) during human cell division and how they are regulated, by rapidly switching them off with chemical inhibitors and imaging the effects with lattice light-sheet microscopy.
Katharine Ullman
University of Utah, UT·Biology
Determine how LEM2, an inner nuclear membrane protein, helps organize the newly forming nuclear envelope after cell division, using timelapse microscopy and proximity labeling to identify nearby proteins.
Susan Dutcher
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Genetics
Determine how microtubule inner proteins (MIPs) inside ciliary doublet microtubules produce the symmetric beating used by sperm and nodal cilia, and test whether they act through outer dynein arms and tektin. Genetic, biochemical, proteomic and imaging approaches will be used.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
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