Welcome to the Joglekar Lab
We study how eukaryotic cells achieve accurate genome inheritance during cell division. When a cell divides, it sends exactly one copy of its chromosomes to each daughter cell. This process, commonly referred to as chromosome segregation, is essential to all biology. It is also important for our well-being: chromosome missegregation plays a fundamental role in tumorigenesis and the emergence of drug resistance in cancer cells. It is implicated in age-related infertility. Therefore, it is essential that we fully understand the complex protein machinery that achieves accurate chromosome segregation.
Our approach to studying chromosome segregation stands at the interface between cell biology, biophysics, and biochemistry. We love to study live cells in action using quantitative fluorescence microscopy. We have engineered protein systems to read out events in a cell, for example, the biochemical reactions of the mitotic checkpoint, a critical signaling cascade involved in chromosome segregation.
In the last few years, we have added a very exciting component to our research: using de novo protein to reverse engineer cellular machines. The long-term goal of this research is to build simplified kinetochore-like machines to segregate synthetic chromosomes.