Spindle Ultra-Structures and the Physics of cell division

Mitotic and Meiotic spindles are the structures that position and seggregate chromosomes as cells divide and multiply. Their correct functioning is a requirement for life, and spindle malfunctions underly many diseases. We seek to understand how spindles work by using physics to integrate data from light microscopy - which gives dynamic temporally resolved information, but is spacially coarse - and electron tomography, which gives highly spatially resolved snapshots of spindle structures, but no dynamic information.