Ms Paola Marco
Position: PhD student
Personal home page:
http://www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk
PubMed journal articles - click here
I am interested in the role played by two S/T protein kinases in mitosis (Aurora A and Cdk1). Both of them have several key roles at different times during mitosis and both of them belong to multi-gene families. Traditional approaches like chemical inhibitors don't allow to specifically study their role since other members of the family get targeted as well, and the use of RNAi just let us know the rate limiting step. Therefore the aim of my PhD project is to apply a combination of Chemical Genetics and rAAV somatic cell knock-ins to tackle these difficulties. Chemical Genetics consists of the identification of a well-conserved bulky residue in the ATP binding site of all kinases (gatekeeper residue) and mutate it to a smaller one. These kinases are specifically inhibited by addition of a bulky ATP analogue. The inhibitor can be washed out, allowing us to study events in a more flexible way. I will introduce these mutants in RPE cells to get endogenous levels.
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