Daniel Needleman

Active mechanics of human mitotic spindles

Abstract:

The mitotic spindle is a self-organization subcellular structure that positions the cleavage plane during cell division and segregates the chromosomes. Spindles in human cells are composed of approximately ten thousand microtubules, as well as proteins which influence microtubule assembly and disassembly, molecular motors and cross-linkers. These constituents are highly dynamic due to ATP and GTP hydrolysis – microtubules continually slide relative to each other, and rapidly polymerize and depolymerize – making the spindle a fundamentally non-equilibrium structure. In this talk, I will describe ongoing work from my lab aimed at understanding how the active mechanics of human mitotic spindles arise from the collective behavior of their constituents and dictates their architecture, dynamics, and positioning, and chromosome segregation.

Speaker: Daniel Needleman, Harvard University and the Flatiron Institute

BA in Physics, Brandeis

PhD in Physics, UCSB, working with Cyrus Safinya

Postdoc, Harvard Med School, Working with Tm Mitchison

Host: Maria Mukhina

Seminars start at 4:00 pm, and refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm. All seminars are held in the 2136 Physical Sciences Complex (#415) unless otherwise noted.