Understanding the mechanism of chromosome segregation: lessons from diversity

Bungo Akiyoshi is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. He is interested in understanding the mechanism of how cells accurately transmit their genetic material during cell division. He obtained his Ph.D in 2010 from the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle where he purified the macromolecular kinetochore complex from budding yeast in Sue Biggins lab. He then moved to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford to join the Keith Gull’s group, where he discovered an unconventional type of kinetochores in Trypanosoma brucei. He set up his own group in 2013 at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford to understand how unconventional kinetochore proteins play conserved kinetochore functions in trypanosomes.