Investigating the spatiotemporal regulation of microtubule nucleation in Drosophila

Paul is a cell biologist based in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, who wants to understand how microtubule formation is regulated in space and time. Microtubules are polarised polymers that have a wide range of important roles in cells, including organising and transporting intracellular particles, vesicles and organelles, and separating duplicated chromosomes during mitosis. Paul uses a combination of Drosophila genetics and live cell imaging to study microtubule formation at different microtubule organising centres (MTOCs) in different cell types. He aims to determine how MTOCs form and how they recruit the protein complexes required to catalyse microtubule formation.