Hyman has focused his career on examining microtubules and how these structures of the cytoskeleton control: cell division, mitotic spindle position, and cell polarity. Hyman's research has identified how microtubules are made into cellular structures and how they are broken down. While at King's College, Cambridge, Hyman worked under the supervision of John White and was a key researcher in Sydney Brenner's C. elegans group. Using microscopy and microsurgery, he examined the placement of cell axes during early cell division of C.elegans embryos. Hyman presented new findings about mechanisms of rotation by cutting microtubules with a laser beam. Hyman demonstrated that pulling forces acting from the posterior cortex on microtubules drives spindle rotation. At the University of California, San Francisco, Hyman investigated the interaction between chromosomes and microtubules that create the mitotic forces that separate chromosomes in the lab of Tim Mitchison. He also created a number of tools that are used today:
While at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Hyman along with Rebecca Heald and Eric Karsenti combined their work to create an impact on the current understanding of how the meiotic spindle self assembles. Hyman created his first independent group at EMBL that discovered that the important factors in Xenopus egg extracts were the stabilizing protein, XMAP215 and the destabilizing protein, XKCM1. In 1999, Hyman became one of the four founding directors of Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and was the Managing Director for the institute from 2010–2013. During his tenure at the MPI-CBG, Hyman and his lab members have focused on:
Cytoplasmic organization and how cells form non-membrane bound compartments
Size and scaling of the spindle, centrosomes, and other organelles
Spatial control of the microtubule cytoskeleton
Positioning of the spindle
Hyman has worked on creating parts lists for cell division among human cells as part of the EU funded projects Mitocheck and MitoSys. Hyman is currently studying the mechanisms by which cells compartmentalize their biochemistry. Of his many contributions to the field of molecular biology, he is best known for two discoveries in particular: In 2000, his team pioneered the use of RNA interference to define the “parts lists” for different cytoplasmic processes. And in 2009, while teaching a physiology course in Woods Hole, he, together with Cliff Brangwynne and Frank Julicher, made a fundamental breakthrough by being the first to observe that compartments in cells can form by phase separation. Aberrant phase transitions within liquid-like compartments may underlie amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative and age-related diseases. Hyman’s current work focuses on the physical-chemical basis by which intrinsically disordered proteins phase separate. Using this knowledge, he is studying the roles of phase separation in physiology and disease.
