Campus Connection

Kinetochore junction
(continued)

"There's a big gap in our understanding of how any of this works from a biochemical perspective," he said. "By understanding how the fundamental mechanism of chromosome segregation works, we can gain new insight on how cells divide, both normally and abnormally."

Kaplan began studying kinetochores seven years ago when he was a postdoctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the field of cell division research has a longer history than that. Scientists were peering into microscopes looking at chromosomes 80 years ago trying to understand how cells divide. This area of research is enjoying a renaissance of sorts now, Kaplan said. Because of tech-nological advances made in microscopy during the past five to 10 years, the picture of what scientists see when looking inside a cell has changed. In the past, researchers could look at chemically preserved cells. It was a snapshot. Today, they can observe living cells.

"Chromosomes are moving. They aren't static," Kaplan said. "In old studies, we looked at things fixed and stopped. Now we can look at living cells and watch them move in real time. It provides tremendous insight into the role of the proteins that we are studying."

"We can do many experiments now that we could not do before," Kaplan said. "Now it's possible to try and answer questions that we couldn't even consider asking 80 years ago about how chromosomes move around the cell."