27
Cell News 2/2015
the currently existing genetic, high-resolution microscopy tools
with biochemical studies. Since the majority of PCM proteins are
coiled-coil in nature exhibiting inherent non-specific protein-
protein interactions, it would be a tough task to pinpoint 1) how
PCM proteins work together to assemble PCM complexes in the
cytoplasm, 2) their recruitment in a centrosome and 3) regu-
lation of their function in terms of microtubule nucleation. A
remedy for this is to dissect direct protein-protein interactions
among the core PCM proteins and the components of
γ
-tubulin
ring complexes. This will ultimately help accomplish the in vitro
functional reconstitution of PCM. While there is a vast set of
genetic tools with a variety of organisms available, the efforts
combining these avenues will result in an in depth understan-
ding of the basic principles of PCM assembly and how a functio-
nal centrosome is built.
Acknowledgements
We apologize that due to space constraint, we could not ack-
nowledge many important contributions. This work was suppor-
ted by a grant (GO 2301/2-1) from Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft and Human Frontiers Science program (RGY0064/2015).
Authors
Anand Ramani did his Bachelors in India in
the field of microbiology and pursued his mas-
ters in medical pharmacology at the Manipal
University, India. During his masters, he as-
sessed the effects of different compounds on
pain and anxiety using wistar rats as his mo-
del system. Further, after receiving his schol-
arship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
(DAAD), he joined the Laboratory of centrosome and cytoskele-
ton biology at the University of Cologne in October 2012 to pur-
sue his doctoral thesis in centrosome assembly and functions.
Li Ming Gooi joined the lab of centrosome and
cytoskeleton biology at the end of 2012 to
pursue her Ph.D. in biological sciences. Before
moving to Cologne, she studied Biotechnology
at the Mannheim University of Applied Scien-
ces, where for her Masters and Bachelors stu-
dies, she worked on the Wnt/ Wg and TGF sig-
naling pathways in
Drosophila
and macrophages respectively.
Jay Gopalakrishnan studied chemical engi-
neering at the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras, India. He then did his Ph.D with Lo-
renz Adrian at the Technical University of Ber-
lin, Germany. For his post-doc, he went to
Harvard, Boston, USA to work with Tomer Avi-
dor Reiss on the biochemistry of centrosomes
in
Drosophila
. He then moved back to Germany where he is now
appointed as an independent junior group leader at the Center
for Molecular Medicine and Institute for Biochemistry-I of the
University of Cologne.
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