Sue Biggins: How kinetochores keep control of mitosis

D uring mitosis, it's up to the kine-tochores assembled on the cen-tromeres of each chromosome to give a cell the go-ahead to begin anaphase. A kinetochore will only give its ready signal once it becomes attached to and stretched apart by microtubules emanating from both opposing spindle poles. This process, known as the spindle checkpoint , ensures the even distribution of chromosomes between daughter cells. Spindle checkpoint defects can cause cell death or cancer, which is why Sue Biggins has devoted her career to studying kinetochores (1–3) and centromere biology (4). Throughout her work, Biggins applies a rigorous methodology she learned as a graduate student with Princeton's Mark Rose, who wouldn't even look at experiments that weren't properly controlled. That philosophy guided both her postdoctoral work with Andrew Murray at UCSF (5) and all of her work since. We called her at her lab at the Fred Hutchin-son Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, to hear how that hard work is paying off with insights into the big questions of kinetochore biology. What fi rst inspired your interest in science? My father was a biochemist. He worked on photosystem I, and he was really interested in the idea that plant energy could be harvested as an alternative energy source. He never pushed me to go into science, and we didn't really talk about his work, but I noticed that he was very passionate about what he did, and that really rubbed off on me. Did you always want to be a scientist? I think I was more interested in music when I was a child. But at some point I got the idea that it would be too diffi cult to have a career in music, so, when I was an undergrad, I decided to be an MD. I applied to med schools and even did some undergraduate research in human nutrition because I thought that would be a useful way to prepare for medical school. I didn't enjoy the work I was doing on human nutrition, though, because there were so many variables to account for that I found I wasn't very comfortable making conclusions. Then I did a summer internship at Merck, and it really changed everything for me. I had a great experience and realized that I loved working in the lab. I was working with yeast, and I was excited that I could design experiments in …