Cells employ tiny machines called ‘motor proteins’ to carry out a myriad of functions including maintenance of cellular organisation, transport of substances across the cell, and generation of forces required for cell division. These activities of motor proteins are facilitated by polymers inside the cell termed ‘microtubules’. Microtubules function as tracks for motor movement, and alternately as ropes which motor proteins pull on. Several cellular processes require a coordination of motor proteins and microtubules. Scientists have gained a wealth of information by replicating cellular processes involving motors and microtubules outside living cell, in what are called ‘in vitro’ experiments. However, understanding the complex intracellular milieu within which motors operate to organise the cell remains an elusive quest. A thorough investigation of processes regulating motors and microtubules therefore lets us see how these processes unravel in both contexts of health and disease (including neurodegeneration and cancers), where they go rogue.
Our main research themes are:
Regulation of motor proteins
Cytoskeleton-organelle interactions
Intracellular organisation
Cellular decision making
In vivo single-molecule imaging
Our Values
We are committed to fostering a welcoming, respectful, and inclusive environment while we have fun doing our science.
Featured Work
REGULATION OF MOTOR PROTEINS
The Cytomotors lab has implicated an actin-based (actin is another kind of cytoskeleton polymer) motor protein (Myo1) in the regulation of a microtubule-based motor protein (dynein), unveiling a rare interplay between motor groups and an interaction between actin- and microtubule-based machinery. Publication: Thankachan et al., PNAS 2017
MICROTUBULES IN THE DIFFERENTIATION OF STEM CELLS IN 3D CULTURES
The Cytomotors lab has discovered a new role for the microtubule cytoskeleton in the maintenance of cell and nuclear size and form in 3D cultures of stem cells and thereby their ability to differentiate, a property that has thus far been attributed solely to the actin cytoskeleton. Publication: Meka et al., ACS Biomat Sci 2017
MICROTUBULE-MEDIATED MITOCHONDRIAL DYNAMICS
Mitochondrial dysfunction has been correlated with the progression of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Using fission yeast as a simple model system, the Cytomotors lab has discovered that microtubule dynamics dictates the dynamics of the mitochondrial fission and fusion dynamics in cells. This discovery could have important implications in understanding the reversal of neurodegenerative mitochondrial phenotypes by modulating microtubule dynamics. Publication: Mehta et al., JBC 2019
UNIPARENTAL MITOCHONDRIAL INHERITANCE
Mitochondria contain their own DNA, which encode a set of proteins required for mitochondrial functioning. Most mammals inherit all their mitochondrial DNA from their mother in a process termed uniparental/maternal mitochondrial inheritance. In fission yeast, we discovered that mitochondria are also uniparentally inherited by physical segregation of parental mitochondria by anchor proteins present at the cell periphery. Publication: Chacko et al. JCB 2019
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