Mark Winey, Ph.D.

Research

Microtubule organizing centers (MTOCs) are eukaryotic cellular structures that nucleate microtubule formation and organize microtubules in 3D space. The poles of mitotic and meiotic spindles define a specific class of MTOCs called centrosomes. Cell cycle control of centrosome assembly is an important event that ensures that centrosomes are duplicated only once per cell cycle so a normal bipolar spindle is formed. Besides chromosome replication, this is the only precise duplication event during the cell cycle. The primary focus of the Winey lab is to understand the mechanisms underlying centrosome duplication. We are also interested in identifying centrosome components and understanding how these structures function in microtubule nucleation, in microtubule organization, and in other cellular processes. Much of our current work centers on proteomic approaches to identifying of MTOC components and the modifications of these components involved MTOC assembly or function.