MitoCheck

MitoCheck is an integrated research project which brings together leading European research groups to study systematically the regulation of mitosis in human cells.

The project aims to test all human genes for involvement in mitosis by RNAi, then identify a subset which will be studied intensively for changes in phosphorylation, subcellular localization and involvement in protein complexes. Other aspects will look at engineering mitotic kinases and translational opportunities for human health.

The European Commission is providing eight and a half million Euro over the next four years to MitoCheck, the largest integrated research project on cell cycle control within the 6th Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Union.

Gene Bridges GmbH is involved in MitoCheck as part of the Tagging Unit in collaboration with the MPI-CBG in Dresden. The aim of the project is to generate stable cell lines whose endogenous proteins, which have been identified as being involved in mitosis and potentially interesting, are completely suppressed by RNAi and then stably replaced by GFP-, TAP-, and LAP-tagged variants. The GFP-tag enables the identification of the intracellular location of these proteins, the TAP-tag allows for the isolation of these proteins for further analysis, and the LAP-tag permits both localization and isolation.