The people behind the papers – Alexander Phillips and David Keays

Certain mutations in end-binding (EB) protein 2, a member of the EB family of conserved microtubule plus-end tracking proteins, are implicated in a rare syndromic form of microcephaly. While the two other EB family members - EB1 and EB3 - have been the subject of intense study, the cellular role of EB2 is not clearly understood. In their work, Alexander (Alex) Phillips, David Keays and colleagues show that EB2 is necessary for maintaining mitotic fidelity during embryonic brain development in mouse and human. To learn more about their work, we spoke to the first author, Alex Phillips, and the corresponding author, David Keays, Adjunct Investigator at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Austria, and Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.