Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit - Division of Intramural Research

 Antonina    Roll-Mecak  Ph.D., Investigator

Dr. Roll-Mecak received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1996. She pursued her graduate training in Stephen Burley's laboratory and received her Ph.D. in molecular biophysics from the Rockefeller University in 2002. Her structural and biochemical studies on translation GTPases helped elucidate the assembly mechanism of a functional ribosome in all organisms. She conducted her postdoctoral training with Ron Vale at the University of California, San Francisco where she investigated the mechanism of macromolecular machines that regulate microtubule dynamics. Dr. Roll-Mecak joined NINDS as an investigator in 2009. Dr. Roll-Mecak has received a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in Biomedical Sciences, a L'Oreal for Women in Science Fellowship Award, a Pathway to Independence Award, a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Postdoctoral Fellowship, and was awarded the Henry W. Reddick Fund Prize and Medal for Mathematics. Her lab combines biophysical and cell biological approaches to understand the mechanism underlying intracellular organization and movement, with a focus on the microtubule cytoskeleton.

Research Interests

The overarching scientific question we are interested in is: how do biophysical properties of microtubules and their modifiers produce cell morphology and organismal physiology?

Selected Recent Publications

Roll-Mecak, A. and Vale, R.D.
Structural basis for microtubule severing by the hereditary spastic paraplegia protein spastin. - Nature  451(7176) 363-7 2008

Roll-Mecak, A. and Vale, R.D.
Making more microtubules by severing: a common theme of noncentrosomal microtubule arrays?  - J. Cell. Biol.  175 (6) 849-851 2006

Roll-Mecak, A. and Vale, R. D.
The Drosophila Homologue of the Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia Protein, Spastin, Severs and Disassembles Microtubules. - Curr. Biol.   5(7) 650-55 2005

Roll-Mecak, A., Shin, B-S, Dever, T.E., and Burley, S.K.
Engaging the ribosome: Universal IFs of translation. - Trends Biochem. Sci.   26(12) 705-709 2001

Roll-Mecak, A., Cao, C., Dever, T.E., and Burley, S.K.
X-ray structures of the Universal Translation Initiation Factor IF2/eIF5B: Conformational Changes on GDP and GTP Binding. - Cell  103 781-792 2000

Contact Information

Porter Neuroscience Research Center Building 35  35 Convent Drive, MSC 3701   Bethesda MD  20892-3701

Telephone: 415-476- 6381 (office), 415- 476-6381 (laboratory), 415-476- 5233 (fax), Email: Antonina@mail.nih.gov