She also holds an adjunct assistant professorship at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Many cellular processes require spatial and temporal coordination of a complex series of events.
One of the most intricate of these is replication and segregation of daughter chromosomes. Both projects were initiated by isolating cells that are resistant to the diploidizing agent, camphor. By isolating camphor resistant chromosomal mutants, we have identified a leading strand helicase that functions to regulate the number of replication forks that can traverse the chromosome. By isolating high copy number plasmids that confer camphor resistance, we have identified a three gene system that functions to condense the chromosome across actively transcribed genes. We have suggested that mbrA may define a novel coupling between DNA replication and cell elongation that functions after initiation of replication and serves to keep chromosome number tied to growth rate.