Mr Danny Gold

About

I am honoured to have been awarded a joint scholarship with Reuben College, The Department of Biochemistry, and the Medical Research Council (MRC) to pursue a doctorate in Biochemistry. Coming from a Physics background, I am truly excited by being given the opportunity to apply my skills in this new context, and work within a multi-disciplinary environment.

In 2021, I graduated from my 4-Year MSci (integrated masters) Physics degree at UCL with a First-Class Honours. I was fortunate enough in my final year to undertake a masters project at the Francis Crick Institute in London, looking at targeting magnetic particles to specific cellular structures using light dimerizing proteins. This project was my first venture in exploring biochemical and biophysical techniques and sparked my interest in wanting to incorporate these into my future fields.

Research 

At Oxford, I study the role of the Aurora A-Protein Phosphatase 6 complex and the NDC80 Protein in cell divisions. This is important as mutations in these key mitotic regulators can result in delays at the spindle assembly checkpoint, causing cells to arrest as well as allowing for the potential of aneuploid cell divisions, leading to human disorders including cancers. This new project will take advantage of cutting-edge genome engineering (using CRISPR/Cas9), microscopy, and optical methods to analyse spindle formation and kinetochore dynamics during mitosis.