Abstract
First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Phuong Le and Jeanne Quinn are co-first authors on ‘ α-catenin phosphorylation is elevated during mitosis to resist apical rounding and epithelial barrier leak’, published in BiO. Phuong is a research technologist in the lab of Dr Cara J. Gottardi at the Departments of Pulmonary Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA, and Jeanne is a MD-PhD student in the same lab. They are investigating how α-catenin phosphorylation restrains mitotic cell rounding in the apical direction, strengthening interactions between dividing and non-dividing neighbors to limit epithelial barrier leak.