Laura Swan

Cell Biologist and Neuroscientist at the University of Liverpool.
I am most interested in the process of membrane traffic- the process which gets proteins in the cell to the right place at the right time, and allows the cells to assemble specialist machines to support all their functions. I study one of the master regulators of membrane traffic, a group of lipids called phosphoinositides. These lipids are essentially cellular 'postal code', a reversible label which instructs where all the little machines in the cell to assemble, so that the right jobs get done at the right place and time. My favourite enzymes, phosphoinositide kinases and phosphatases, act to change this label. Mutations of these enzymes cause a series of congenital disorders and cancers which I study.