Cristian Gradinaru, Grad Student

The question I set out to address was motivated by David Altman's experiments which showed that external forces acting on myosin VI can convert it from a trafficking motor to a structural anchor. Under the guidance of our wonderous advisor, Jim, and our collaborator down the hall, Professor Aaron Straight, I would like to understand the broader role of tension sensing in biology by asking how cells respond to the tension generated by mitotic kinesins during cell division. While the mitotic checkpoint has been well studied from a cell biological perspective, there is little biochemical and biophysical data on how it functions. Specifically, I am interested in understanding how the mitotic kinesin Cenp-E and its binding partner, the BubR1 kinase, major players