Calander Home 2001-2002 2002-2003 Dr. David Odde Construction and Destruction of Microtubules Date: November 11 Time: Noon to 1 Place: BSBE 4-101 Microtubules are linear filaments of the cytoskeleton that serve as tracks for molecular motor-based transport in axons and for segregation of chromosomes in mitosis, and generally serve to organize the intracellular environment. Understanding what dictates the construction and destruction of microtubules is important in the seemingly diverse medical problems of cancer and restenosis after stent placement, both of which can be treated with the microtubule assembly-promoting drug taxol (paclitaxel). The seminar will review our recent work on 1) katanin, an ATPase that forms a microtubule severing complex, and 2) microtubule dynamics in dividing cells. The latter topic will also illustrate a new approach we have developed, called model-convolution, for comparing mathematical models to molecular behaviors observed by fluorescence microscopy.