Trisha N. Davis

Dr. Davis was the first to discover that calmodulin performs conserved and essential functions independently of binding calcium ions. She developed technologies to obtain structural information of protein complexes using FRET in live cells and protein crosslinking followed by mass spectrometry. She now focuses on the reconstitution of the mitotic spindle. She was the first to reconstitute the small gamma-tubulin complex. With David Agard, she provided the first structure of the gamma-tubulin ring complex and established that it acts as a template for microtubule nucleation. With biophysicist Charles Asbury, she reconstituted the strength and regulation of microtubule binding to kinetochores.