First person – Collin Ainslie and Krishna Patel

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Collin Ainslie and Krishna Patel are co-first authors on ‘ The desmoplakin tail domain position in the desmosomal plaque is isoform dependent’, published in JCS. Collin conducted the research described in this article as a PhD candidate in Alexa Mattheyses's lab at University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, USA, where he is interested in uncovering the complex relationship between protein structure and function using novel microscopy techniques. Krishna Patel conducted this work while an MS student in the same laboratory and is now a PhD student in the lab of Vladimir Sirotkin at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, USA. She is interested in studying dynamic cellular structures and processes involved in generating and managing forces, such as endocytosis, cell division and desmosomes.