Steve Haase
Assistant Professor

613-8205

FFSC 4316

Haase Lab Page

Research Interests: Control of cell cycle, DNA replication, and centrosome duplication in budding yeast

In order to divide, cells must first duplicate their entire contents, and then segregate the duplicated contents equally into two daughter cells. The duplication and segregation events of the cell division cycle must be triggered in a strict temporal order to insure that each new daughter cell is identical to the original mother cell. Using the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model system, we are investigating the role of a highly conserved family of cell cycle regulatory proteins, called cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks), in maintaining the ordered sequence of events during cell division. Our lab utilizes a variety of molecular, genetic, genomic and cell imaging approaches to address three fundamental questions: 1. What are the mechanisms that initiate the ordered progression of the cell cycle? 2. How do Cdk activities insure that DNA sequences are replicated once and only once during each cell cycle? 3. How do Cdk activities insure that centrosomes/ spindle pole bodies are duplicated once and only once during each cell cycle? We have found that cells lacking mitotic Cdk activities undergo successive rounds of budding, DNA replication, and spindle pole body (centrosome) duplication without intervening mitoses. Our findings suggest that mitotic Cdk activities are essential not only for promoting mitosis, but also for preventing the re-initiation of duplication events until the completion of mitosis. Several lines of evidence suggest that failure to properly coordinate cell cycle events may lead to genome instability, a driving force in tumorigenesis. The goal of our research is to understand how Cdk activities normally maintain order during the cell cycle, and how perturbation of Cdk activities may contribute to genome instability.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. David A. Orlando, Charles Y. Lin, Allister Bernard, Jean Y. Wang,Joshua E. S. Socolar, Edwin S. Iversen, Alexander J. Hartemink, Steven B. Haase, Global control of cell cycle transcription by coupled CDK and network oscillators, Nature (Submitted, August, 2007)  [abs].
2. SB Haase, DJ Lew, Microtubule organization: cell shape is destiny., Current biology : CB, England, vol. 17 no. 7 (April, 2007), pp. R249-51  [abs].
3. DA Orlando, CY Lin, A Bernard, ES Iversen, AJ Hartemink, SB Haase, A probabilistic model for cell cycle distributions in synchrony experiments., Cell cycle (Georgetown, Tex.), United States, vol. 6 no. 4 (February, 2007), pp. 478-88  [abs].
4. LP Jackson, SI Reed, SB Haase, Distinct mechanisms control the stability of the related S-phase cyclins Clb5 and Clb6., Molecular and cellular biology, United States, vol. 26 no. 6 (March, 2006), pp. 2456-66  [abs].
5. S. Haase, Cell Cycle Analysis of Budding Yeast Using SYTOX Green, in Curr. Prot. Cytom., edited by J. Paul Robinson (Fall, 2003), pp. 7.23.1-7.23.5, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. .