Jackie Vogel

My research focuses on the temporal and spatial control of the assembly and function of the cell division machinery. The goal of the research is to measure the physical properties of the mitotic spindle during its assembly and in mitosis, relate these properties to its function in living cells, and discover the molecular origins of chromosome inheritance and loss. The initial events in forming the mitotic spindle, a nanomachine that executes chromosome segregation, remain largely un-interrogated. The events lying between centrosome duplication and metaphase are represented as a single arrow when mitosis is described in textbooks and primary research studies. Our research replaces this arrow with a detailed physical characterization of spindle assembly, providing the molecular basis of spindle stability and the relationship between emergent properties of the spindle to chromosome segregation.  We integrate biophysics and computational biology with cell biology methods using budding yeast, a genetically tractable model organism.