Kathryn Ayscough

Kathryn Rachel Ayscough is a professor of molecular cell biology and head of the department of biomedical science at the University of Sheffield. She was awarded the 2002 Society for Experimental Biology President's Medal. Her research investigates the role of the actin cytoskeleton in membrane trafficking and cell organisation.

Early life and education Ayscough attended a comprehensive school near Bristol and studied biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she was a student at Exeter College, Oxford. She moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and University College London for her doctoral degree, where she worked on the Golgi apparatus in Schizosaccharomyces pombe under the supervision of Graham Warren. Research and career After her PhD, Ayscough moved to the University of California, Berkeley as a Wellcome Trust research fellow, working with David Drubin.

Ayscough moved to the University of Dundee as a Wellcome Trust Development Fellow. Ayscough joined the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Sheffield in 2003 and was promoted to Professor in 2012.

Her research considers the mechanisms that control cell organisation. In particular, she looks at how actin (an element of the cytoskeleton) can initiate the formation of filaments, which permit inward bending of the plasma membrane. Invagination, the inward bending process of the plasma membrane, is known as endocytosis, and ensures that cells can regulate the composition of their surface to respond to environmental signals. She has explored how dynamin, amphiphysin and actin work together during the formation of cell membranes. Ayscough has also studied how endocytosis and cell shape relate to the invasion and survival of Candida albicans.

Selected publications Her publications Latrunculin alters the actin-monomer subunit interface to prevent polymerization Actin-binding proteins

She has written for The Conversation.