The Stukenberg Lab

The Stukenberg lab studies the mechanisms of chromosome segregation and connects these to cancer development.  Our research has focused on how kinetochores bind microtubules of the mitotic spindle and how each chromosome ensures that each of these kinetochore-microtubule attachments are correct.  We identified the key microtubule attachment complex (Ndc80) and also the pathway that corrects improper kinetochore attachments.  Recently, we developed bioinformatic methods to measure aneuploidy in cancer sequence datasets and found that breast tumors misregulate these pathways to become more aggressive.