All living organisms are made of
cells and store their genetic information in the same way, as
long molecules of DNA that are organised into structures within
the cells called chromosomes. The chromosomes contain many different
genes that carry the instructions to allow the cells to make
proteins and to control their growth and division. In the more
complex forms of cells found in plants and animals, chromosomes
are kept within a specialised compartment called the cell nucleus
and it is within the nucleus that genes are activated. Each
gene is also copied every time a cell divides to ensure that
both daughter cells receive a copy of every gene. Our research
is aimed at understanding how the nucleus works and how the
different components within the nucleus are organised to help
it to function efficiently. We study the nucleus using advanced
light microscopes to see where molecules are located and to
record how they move under different conditions. We know that
many forms of human disease, including viral infections, malignancies
and inherited genetic disorders, can all cause profound changes
inside the cell nucleus. We therefore study the changes that
occur in the nuclei of cells taken from human patients to try
to understand better the relation between theses specific changes
and the mechanism of disease. In this way our research studies
the biology of human cells in such a way that it is highly relevant
to understanding human disease and to the future development
of new therapies and improved diagnosis and screening procedures.
Click on a flag below to read this brief overview of our work in
your language of choice: We'd like to thank the following people for providing
translations: Alfred Vertegaal, David Lleres, Johannes Grillari, Mario
Cioce, Marco Denegri, the Chusainows, Yun Wah Lam, Xiuwen Tang, Diego
Miranda-Saveedra, Moto Ono, Bartosz Pilch, Shalini Pathak, Young Ju
Lee, Blagoy Blagoev, Sonia Rocha, Nazan Saner,Gerta Hoxhaj and Roby
Murcia.
For a description of our work aimed
at nonscientists, click here.
Follow the links below to learn more about some of the techniques
we use in our research:
