Nadia Hegarat

Postdoc

Nadia is interested in the link between cell cycle and genome stability. In cycling cells, the maintenance of genome integrity consists in faithful genome duplication, accurate segregation of the replicated chromosomes and repair of damaged DNA. She started her research career in France (“Régulation et dynamique des génomes”) where she developed a highly specific purification method of DNA repair complexes. In 2008, she joined Helfrid Hochegger’s group in the University of Sussex as a post-doctoral fellow to expand on her interest in cell cycle regulation. She worked on Aurora kinase A, an essential mitotic kinase with unclear functions. She found that Aurora A regulates chromosome segregation by controlling microtubule depolymerisation during the spindle disassembly. They also made an advance in the understanding of how anaphase onset is initiated: they identified protein phosphatases controlling the mitotic exit regulators Greatwall and ENSA. Her current research project is to understand how cyclins contributes to G2/M transition and mitotic progression and she is working closely with Bela Novak’s team to tackle this question.