Speakers

Rebecca Heald obtained her Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, working with Frank McKeon on cell cycle regulation. She performed her postdoctoral work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg in Eric Karsenti's lab. At Berkeley since 1998, she is now a full Professor. Research in the Heald lab aims to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of cell division and size control. Interdisciplinary approaches take advantage of in vitro systems, particularly cytoplasmic extracts prepared from eggs of the frog Xenopus laevis that reconstitute mitotic chromosome condensation and spindle assembly and function in vitro. To study mechanisms of spindle and organelle size control, a smaller, related frog, Xenopus tropicalis, is utilized to investigate interspecies scaling, and extracts prepared from fertilized eggs at different stages of embryogenesis to study scaling that occurs during the reductive cleavages of early development.