This is the home page of Fred Chang's laboratory in Department of Microbiology, Columbia Medical School, New York City, NY. The Chang lab studies how cells divide and grow and aims to contribute to our understanding of how cells are assembled.

How do cells determine where they should divide, and where should they polarize? How do cells determine their shape?

Many of our studies deal with how microtubules and actin are organized in the cell and how they move key proteins or organelles to specific locations in the cell to regulate cell polarity and cytokinesis.

To address these questions, we use a simple eukaryotic model organism, the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe.