Steve Haase, Associate Professor  

Steve Haase

Education:
Ph.D., Stanford University, 1993

Office Location: FFSC: 4316
Office Phone: (919) 613-8205
Email Address: shaase@duke.edu
Web Page: http://www.biology.duke.edu/haaselab/index.html

Specialties:
Genetics
Genomics
Cell and Molecular Biology

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

Research Description: 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. MB Mayhew, JW Robinson, B Jung, SB Haase, AJ Hartemink, A generalized model for multi-marker analysis of cell cycle progression in synchrony experiments., Bioinformatics (Oxford, England), vol. 27 no. 13 (July, 2011), pp. i295-303 [doi]  [abs].
  2. LA Simmons Kovacs, SB Haase, Cohesin: it's not just for chromosomes anymore., Cell cycle (Georgetown, Tex.), vol. 9 no. 9 (May, 2010), pp. 1750-3 [doi]  [abs].
  3. MK Chee, SB Haase, B-cyclin/CDKs regulate mitotic spindle assembly by phosphorylating kinesins-5 in budding yeast., PLoS genetics, vol. 6 no. 5 (May, 2010), pp. e1000935 [doi]  [abs].
  4. Orlando, D.A., Iversen, E.S., Hartemink, A.J., and Haase, S.B, A branching process model for flow cytometry and budding index measurements in cell synchrony experiments, Ann. App. Statistics (Winter, 2009) .
  5. DA Orlando, ES Iversen Jr, AJ Hartemink, SB Haase, A BRANCHING PROCESS MODEL FOR FLOW CYTOMETRY AND BUDDING INDEX MEASUREMENTS IN CELL SYNCHRONY EXPERIMENTS., The annals of applied statistics, vol. 3 no. 4 (2009), pp. 1521-1541 [doi]  [abs].

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