The work in my lab aims to understand the composition, architecture and activity of molecular machines as they work in the cell. My research addresses the fact that the intracellular environment is too complex to be accurately reproduced in test tubes. Therefore, we develop and use advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques to quantify cellular activities in genetically tractable “simple” organisms. The focus of my team is the study of DNA replication, which is both the most active guardian against genetic mutations and the most frequent source of genomic instability. An incomplete understanding of the molecular machine that carries out DNA replication, the replisome, is a major impediment to understanding its role in health and disease.