Sabine Petry, Ph.D.

Research

The mission of my lab is to understand how cells acquire their shape, position organelles, move materials, and segregate chromosomes during cell division. These features are organized by the microtubule (MT) cytoskeleton, which resembles the skeletal system that supports our human body. Its biological function relies on the precise arrangement of MTs in the cell. To achieve this organization, MTs are generated at defined locations and then organized by proteins, which sever, grow, shrink, bundle, anchor, or move MTs. We want to understand these functionalities mechanistically and study them by combining methods of cell biology, biochemistry, biophysics, structural biology and engineering. This will ultimately reveal how the MT cytoskeleton builds structures to support essential functions of the cell, and enable us to address malfunction of the MT cytoskeleton, which lie at the heart of many diseases involving cell proliferation and cancer.