Telephone: (301) 496-7882

E-mail: hammerj@nhlbi.nih.gov

Office: Building 50, Room 2306

Mailing Address:
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
50 South Drive, MSC 8017

Bethesda, Maryland 20892-8017 

Molecular genetic analysis of motor: organelle interactions

Rab GTPases and organelle motility

Rab GTPases and lymphocyte function

Rafts and microtubule-dependent vesicle traffic

Motor-dependent recruitment of machinery regulating actin assembly

Mammalian pigmentation

The long range goals of the section are to identify and characterize unconventional myosins, and to define their roles in the motility of cells and organelles. Efforts focus primarily on Dictyostelium and mouse as model systems. We use a variety of approaches to attain these goals, including (i) biochemical and biophysical characterization of purified or bacculovirus-expressed myosins, (ii) localization of myosins using light immunofluorescence microscopy, immumoelectron microscopy, the expression of myosin/GFP chimeras, and subcellular fractionation, (iii) identification of proteins that interact with myosins using biochemical and molecular genetic approaches, (iv) creation of cell lines/animials that lack particular unconventional myosins using homologous recombination/ antisense RNA expression, and (v) characterization of these mutants using a variety of cell biological assays, quantitative video microscopy of cellular and intracellular motility, and transmission electron microscopy.