Laura Machesky is Senior Research Group Leader at the CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow. She discovered the 7-subunit Arp2/3 complex and during her early career demonstrated that this was a major regulator of actin dynamics and cell migration. This work changed the way the field understood fundamental principles of signalling to actin dynamics and impacted on biomedical problems such as host-pathogen interactions, endocytic trafficking, phagocytosis and cancer cell invasion. Dr Machesky’s group at the Beatson Institute has discovered how Rho GTPases control developmental migration of melanocytic cells, to better understand how these processes go wrong in melanoma metastasis.