Laura Machesky: Actin opens the way

T he actin cytoskeleton is the main driver of cell motility, an essential function of normal body tissues. However, the same processes are also at the heart of cancer cell metastasis and invasion. Understanding the normal regulation of actin-dependent cell motil-ity and how this is altered in cancer cells should leave us better equipped to tackle the disease. Laura Machesky's research is aimed at uncovering these mechanisms. Her work on the Arp2/3 complex, which nucleates the growth of new actin filaments, has elicited important mechanistic insights into the complex's function (1) and the upstream pathways that regulate it (2, 3). Now her lab is looking at how these pathways are modulated during development and in invading cancer cells (4, 5). We called her at her lab at the UK's Beatson Institute to discuss her work. DEMYSTIFICATION What are you passionate about? If we're talking about my work, I love spending time looking for new connections between systems, either in the literature or in various databases. I'm passionate about finding out new things and looking for new ways of connecting ideas that we were already aware of but didn't know how to fi t together. Outside the lab, I'm passionate about learning, education and discovery. I have 12-year-old twin girls and a 10-year-old boy, and I love the fact that they are interested in what I do at work. I love that they want to know about how cells move and how this relates to cancer. That's not because I necessarily want my kids to become scientists, but I think that understanding science and research helps them understand how the world works. That helps make the challenges one faces in life less bewildering and confusing. Do you discuss your own work very much with your family? My husband, Robert Insall, is working in a very closely related fi eld. He works on cell migration, mainly in Dictyostelium, whereas I work with mammalian cells and mice. So we actually do a lot of work together, and we talk about it at home. We don't necessarily launch into a lot of jargon at the dinner table, but we do talk about our research sometimes, so our kids get to hear about it. NUCLEATION You did your PhD with Tom Pollard… At fi rst I thought I wanted to be a crys-tallographer, but after doing some lab rotations in graduate school at Johns Hopkins …