David Glover

David Moore Glover

In 1989, he relinquished his position as Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Imperial to move to the University of Dundee, where with David and Birgitte Lane he established the Cancer Research Campaign Laboratories, Dundee. Here his work demonstrated Polo not only to be required at centrosomes in Drosophila but also for cytokinesis. In parallel studies, Glover found that in an organism as distant as fission yeast, Polo's counterpart, that he named Plo1, was also required to establish functional spindle pole bodies and cytokinesis rings. Remarkably, the localisation and function of Polo kinase at the centrosome, the kinetochore and the central spindle in cytokinesis was highly conserved in human cells where its expression was elevated in tumours. This led Glover to collaborations with Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical industries in developing small molecule inhibitors of Polo for use in cancer therapy.^{[citation needed]}

In Dundee he continued to use Drosophila as a means to uncover new components of the mitotic apparatus and its regulatory circuits. These studies uncovered spindle pole molecules whose functions were regulated by Polo kinase; a germ line specific Cdc25 phosphatase that regulates meiotic entry; and demonstrated the roles of PP1 and PP2A protein phosphatases as negative mitotic regulators. His contribution to science in Scotland was recognised by his election to

In 1999, Glover moved to the University of Cambridge to become the 6th Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Head of Department. In Cambridge he discovered the second main Aurora B kinase required for cells to progress through metaphase and used genetic approaches to identify and demonstrate the roles of the Greatwall kinase in inhibiting protein phosphase 2A during mitotic entry and progression. Over the past decade he has uncovered the major steps of centriole duplication by demonstrating that Polo-like-kinase 4 (Plk4) is its master regulator; Plk4 expression can drive the de novo formation of centrioles in unfertilised Drosophila eggs. In searching for Plk4's partners, his group identified Asterless (Cep152 in human cells) as required for bringing Plk4 to centrioles and an F-box protein, Slimb – a component of the SCF ubiquitin protein ligase, as responsible for targeting excess Plk4 for destruction. They showed that Plk4 phosphorylates the centriole protein Ana2/STIL to enable it to bind the "cartwheel protein" Sas6 and thus initiate procentriole formation, the first step of centriole duplication.^{[citation needed]}

In 2019, the Glover Lab moved to the California Institute of Technology in USA. ^[11]

Glover's group are now^[when?] studying the consequences of supernumerary centrosomes in a variety of mammalian tissues and their consequences for the balance of cell proliferation and differentiation in the skin and pancreas.

Personal life

Glover married Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz in 2000.^[3]

References