Oncological Sciences

E-mail:  katie.ullman@hci.utah.edu
Address:  Huntsman Cancer Institute, Rm 5345
Phone: 585-7123

How Membranes Are Dispersed In A Nucleus

Our lab is interested in how cells are remodeled during division.  In particular, we are interested in how the membranes that enclose the nucleus are dispersed at a particular time, in coordination with other events such as chromosome condensation and nuclear lamina disassembly.  Deeper knowledge of the mechanisms that underlie these events will provide a basis for understanding the deregulation of cell division during tumor progression and ultimately will give us new tools with which to stop unwanted cell proliferation. A project in this area would focus on either 1) identifying proteins that participate in this process or 2) deciphering the regulation of events that lead to nuclear membrane dispersal.  We have previously found that the coatomer complex, COPI, is important to this process (Liu et al., 2003; Prunuske et al., 2006).  Thus, our current projects are aimed at understanding what recruits COPI at a particular time in mitosis to the nuclear membrane and what cofactors work in the context of this role.  Approaches include live-cell imaging, siRNA knockdown, and electron microscopy.  A second interest in the lab is that of understanding the regulation of protein translation at mitosis and a short-term project could focus on addressing the regulation of localized translation during the cell cycle.

1/2008