My project focuses on mechanisms underlying chromosome segregation fidelity in human cells. During division, missegregation occurs due to kinetochore-microtubule mal-attachments, whose correction is necessary for faithful segregation. We have uncovered that the Kinesin-13, Kif2b, increases microtubule dynamics at the kinetochores, hence allowing for the release of erronous attachments and the general destabilization of kinetochore fibers in early mitosis necessary for proper chromosome alignment.
These pictures represent a monopolar spindle, a bipolar spindle with monooriented unaligned chromosomes, and an anaphase spindle with lagging chromatids.
