Piecing together molecular machines
During your lifetime, the cells in your body divide many trillions of times. Iain Cheeseman, an associate professor of biology at MIT, has spent his career studying how cells control this process, which is critical to ensuring that the correct genetic information is passed down from generation to generation. “We have 46 chromosomes, and every single one of those chromosomes is important. You have to make sure that they’re independently distributed to each new cell that’s made,” says Cheeseman, who is also a member of MIT’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Key to that process is the kinetochore, a cellular structure that holds onto each chromosome to guide it to the daughter cells during cell division. The kinetochore includes hundreds of proteins that interact with each other to maintain chromosomal stability. Cheeseman discovered many of these proteins, and has determined the functions of many more. “I really love working on it,” he says....