Amy Shaub Maddox, PhD
Professor
Associate Chair for Academic Affairs
Areas of Interest
cell shape; contractility; cytoskeleton; cytokinesis; cell division; oogenesis; C. elegans; septins; theoretical modeling
About
- Department Affiliations:
- Biology
- Other UNC PhD Program Affiliations:
- Biology Qbio; Cell Biology and Physiology; Biophysics; Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
My Research
Every living thing is made up of cells. For a fertilized egg to become a person, or for tissues like the skin and digestive tract to be replenished to compensate for wear and tear, cells must multiply. Proper cell multiplication is also necessary to avoid disease states including cancer. Therefore, to understand normal development and certain pathologies, we must understand how cells multiply.A cell first grows and makes a copy of its DNA blueprint. Then, the DNA is rearranged from a massive tangle into individual rods, called chromosomes, which can be moved in a controlled fashion. The cell builds a machine, the spindle, which attaches and moves the chromosomes so that one complete copy of the blueprint is placed at each end of the cell. Finally, the single “mother cell” must be physically split into two “daughter cells.”
Although these dramatic events of cell division have fascinated researchers for over a century, major questions remain about the cellular machines that carry out these steps, and how our collective current knowledge applies to different kinds of cells. Our lab is working to understand how many of these steps in cell division take place. We use multiple model animal cells, to be sure what we discover is true for most cells. We make movies of cells dividing and then measure parameters including the size, speed, packing, and shape of cellular features.