Michael McMurray is an Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. He first began using the power of yeast genetics during his PhD studies with Dan Gottschling at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington. After investigating the replicative aging process, he became interested in how individual proteins assemble into multi-subunit complexes and did postdoctoral research studying septin protein complexes with Jeremy Thorner at the University of California, Berkeley. He is especially curious about how the same proteins can adopt distinct conformations that direct the assembly of distinct complexes. The McMurray lab continues to use S. cerevisiae to investigate septin assembly. Studies of septin function in yeast sporulation led to recent projects exploring molecular mechanism of cell polarity and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression during spore germination. 

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