Linda Wordeman

Linda Wordeman is a Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington School of Medicine at Seattle and a member of the Center for Cell Dynamics at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. Her laboratory uses high-resolution live imaging to study the dynamic behavior of chromosomes during cell division.

After receiving her Ph.D. in the Department of Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, studying cell division in marine diatoms under the direction of Dr. W. Zacheus Cande, she went on to study chromosome segregation and cytoskeletal dynamics at the University of California, San Francisco, in the laboratory of Dr. Timothy J. Mitchison. She joined the Physiology and Biophysics Department at the University of Washington in 1994.

For over 100 years the marine eggs of clams, sea urchins, and sand dollars have served as important model systems to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying chromosome segregation and cancer development. More recently, high-resolution fluorescent imaging techniques and improved instrumentation have enabled researchers to revisit this system as a means to better understand the detailed mechanisms and mechanics underlying the reliable segregation of chromosomes during each cell division.

Linda Wordeman will be using her Guggenheim Fellowship term to work at Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories developing probes to image these dynamic chromosome movements in live eggs.