Two UW faculty members plan to travel to Woods Hole, Massachusetts this summer to conduct research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as the result of a pair of research awards.
John Oakey and Jay Gatlin each received a 2015 Whitman Center Research Award to continue their research on mitotic spindle assembly. Together Oakey and Gatlin published a paper on the topic that appeared in a 2013 issue of “Science,” one of the world’s top scientific journals. They will pair up again this this summer to continue researching on a more advanced level.
Oakey, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, received a $17,070 award to cover his lab space and housing expenses from June 1 – August 15. Gatlin, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, received a $30,000 Nikon Award for his expenses over the same period.
“The question Jay and I answered is: what’s the effect of confinement of the spindle during cell division? What regulates its size?” Oakey said. “We answered a fundamental question about spindle size, and we did it in a simple droplet.”
Oakey said he created a t-junction microfluidic device that encapsulates isolated cytoplasm—the substance inside the enclosed membrane of a biological cell—in small droplets. The droplet generators are customized so the fluids used, typically chemicals and oils, have no effect on what happens inside the droplets. The device enables them to study the cell on a surrogate platform.
“It’s a surrogate for a cell,” Oakey said.
In 2013 Oakey and Gatlin teamed up for collaborative research that examined how the mitotic spindle scales with changes in cell size. Mitotic spindles are directly responsible for the correct segregation and separation of chromosomes in cell division.
“It’s a wonderful collaboration, and one of the reasons why both of them have been so successful,” Mark Stayton, department chair of the Department of Molecular Biology, said. “You can use the microfluidic device to test hypothesis about how the cell works, and subject them to various changes and geometries, without a cell in sight.”
Oakey said that the eventual applications from this research are numerous, and that “everything from complete blood cell count test to extracting circulating tumor cells from cancer patients,” could be possible. Oakey said the research could also be a step toward individualized cancer treatment.
Oakey also said he is looking forward to the MBL experience. The Whitman Program gathers some of the most prestigious cell biologists, and hosts very selective educational courses with visiting lecturers for students.
“It’s a very dynamic environment with people gathering from all over the world,” Oakey said.
