Dr. Ohi graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1993 with a B.S. in Molecular Biology. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 in Cell Biology from Vanderbilt University and completed post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School with Professor Tim Mitchison. Dr. Ohi established his independent research program at Vanderbilt in 2007, where he remained as a tenured faculty member until 2017. In 2017, Dr. Ohi relocated to the University of Michigan where he is an Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. Dr. Ohi is also an Adjunct Research Associate Professor within the Life Sciences Institute. Dr. Ohi’s research focuses on the mechanisms that underlie mitotic spindle assembly and function. Research in his laboratory is currently funded by an R01 from the NIH, and a career development award from the the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Biography
Research Interests
A system that defines cellular organization and function is the microtubule cytoskeleton, a network of rod-like filaments that form and disassemble on the time scale of minutes. How do MT arrays organize? How are their dynamics regulated to control the physical and functional properties of these MT networks? These questions form the basis of work in the R. Ohi laboratory, which is to understand how MTs are positioned and remodeled in space and time to carry out diverse biological functions.
We focus specifically on microtubule function during cell division. During this process, microtubules form the building blocks of the mitotic spindle, a cellular machine that generates forces that move chromosomes. The spindle also plays a key role during cytokinesis, where it defines the location of the cleavage plane specification and drives abscission. We use quantitative light microscopy to investigate protein functions in the mitotic spindle and biochemistry to understand the mechanisms of action of key spindle proteins. We are also characterizing the roles of tubulin post-translational modifications during cell division. Our long term goal is to leverage our findings to identify new targets for anti-mitotic cancer therapies, and to use high throughput screening to discover chemical inhibitors of these targets.
Current Students
