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SEMINAR: Pole position: Spindle mechanisms that regulate asymmetric cell division and brain size

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Today's date is Saturday, March 30, 2024
Pole position: Spindle mechanisms that regulate asymmetric cell division and brain size : School of Anatomy, Physiology & Human Biology Seminar Series Other events...
The Seminar: Asymmetric division is a specific form of mitosis that generates two unequal daughter cells with different fates. It is an intrinsic property of pluripotent, self-renewing progenitor cells and required for tissue morphogenesis and homeostasis. Defects in mechanisms regulating division asymmetry contribute to unbalanced proliferation/differentiation, genetic instability and the increased incidence of human diseases that include congenital defects, neurological disorders and carcinogenesis. For example, primary autosomal recessive microcephaly is a congenital condition characterized by severely reduced brain size due to the premature depletion of self-renewing neural precursor cells and insufficient embryonic neurogenesis. Recently, the genetic interrogation of microcephalic patients, facilitated by rapid advances in massively paralleled DNA sequencing, have provided novel mechanistic insights into asymmetric division of human neural precursors. One of the most frequently mutated microcephaly genes (~30% of cases) encodes WD40-Repeat Protein 62 (WDR62), a spindle pole protein. The position and orientation of the microtubule-based spindle apparatus during cell division (mitosis) specifies asymmetric segregation of cell fate determinants between daughter cells that then commit to different fates. In this seminar, I will present recent work from our laboratory that describes the molecular and biochemical basis of WDR62-directed signalling at the spindle pole required for spindle orientation, asymmetric division and binary cell fate determination.

The Speaker: Dominic’s research utilizes multi-disciplinary approaches to unravel complex regulation and function of kinase signalling networks in mammalian cell biology. His goal is to increase molecular understanding of these fundamental mechanisms that are highly relevant to human development and disease progression. He obtained his PhD at the University of Western Australia in 2004 and trained overseas at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, A*STAR, in Singapore. He returned to the Australian research community on an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship (2006-2010) followed by a University of Melbourne Faculty Trust Roper Fellowship (2011-2012). In this time, Dominic established an independent research program and his team has increased knowledge on complex regulation of cellular architecture by JAK/STAT and MAPK signalling pathways. Dominic was recently appointed (2013) as Senior Research Fellow and principal investigator, supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (2013-2016), and is based at Department of Biochemistry within the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne.
Speaker(s) Dr Dominic Ng, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne
Location Room 1.81, Anatomy Building north
Contact Debbie Hull <[email protected]> : 6488 3313
Start Tue, 20 May 2014 13:00
End Tue, 20 May 2014 14:00
Submitted by Debbie Hull <[email protected]>
Last Updated Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:35
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