Contact Information
Biography
Dr McCormick joined Duquesne University in 1996. He has a BA in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Delaware, and a PhD in Biological Sciences fomr the University of Rochester. McCormick's laboratory is interested in understanding the problem of how cells divide and how they faithfully segregate copies of their genomes. Our approach to this problem is to study cell division and chromsome segregation genes in a simple organism accessible to genetic manipulation. The organism I study is the filamentous soil bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor.
Education
- B.A., Biology and Chemistry, University of Delaware, 1982
- Ph.D., Biological Sciences, University of Rochester, 1989
- Postdoc, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, 1992
Research Interests
Genetic Dissection of Prokaryotic Cytokinesis and Chromosome Segregation:
Streptomyces coelicolor mycelial bacterium undergoes an elaborate cycle of cellular differentiation similar to that of certain filamentous fungi. During differentiation, aerial hyphal filaments are partitioned by extensive septation to form uninucleoid cells that further metamorphose into chains of spores.
In unicellular bacteria, cell division is required for growth and therefore is essential. However, my previous results demonstrate that septation is dispensable for vegetative growth of S. coelicolor, but still required for subdivision of aerial filaments during spore formation. Therefore, the advantage of using this system is that it is possible to isolate or construct mutants to analyze bacterial cytokinesis as a nonessential process using this filamentous bacterium while similar mutants would be lethal in unicellular organisms. I hope this approach will identify new genes involved in cell division, particularly those whose products are involved in imparting the positional information as to where the future sites of cell division will be.
Because of its complex life cycle, S. coelicolor offers an excellent system for studying regulation of morphological differentiation. My results suggest that cell division has been mainly co-opted for septation during spore formation in this organism. A second goal of my research is to analyze how cell division is regulated temporally and spatially such that it occurs synchronously in the aerial hyphae, the regions of the colony which are destined to become spores.