Publications by authors named "Irsa Shoukat"

Introduction: Liquid biopsies are proving to have diagnostic and prognostic value in many different cancers, and in breast cancer they have the potential to improve outcomes by providing valuable information throughout a patient's cancer journey. However, patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) have received little benefit from such liquid biopsies due to underlying limitations in the discovery and utility of robust biomarkers. Here, we examine the development of DNA methylation-based liquid biopsy assays for breast cancer and how they pertain to TNBC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kinesin-8s are dual-activity motor proteins that can move processively on microtubules and depolymerize microtubule plus-ends, but their mechanism of combining these distinct activities remains unclear. We addressed this by obtaining cryo-EM structures (2.6-3.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mitotic spindles assume a bipolar architecture through the concerted actions of microtubules, motors, and cross-linking proteins. In most eukaryotes, kinesin-5 motors are essential to this process, and cells will fail to form a bipolar spindle without kinesin-5 activity. Remarkably, inactivation of kinesin-14 motors can rescue this kinesin-5 deficiency by reestablishing the balance of antagonistic forces needed to drive spindle pole separation and spindle assembly.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF