Robert Insall

With Laura Machesky, he identified an important signaling pathway that controls the behavior of the actin cytoskeleton.[8] Insall later proposed that chemotaxis, the process by which cells move towards sources of nutrients or other chemoattractants, is not driven by signaling from the cell membrane but instead by influencing the rate or direction of the extension of pseudopodia, protrusions that the cell uses to move.[9] He later introduced the idea that instead of responding to pre-formed chemoattractant gradients, cells generate these gradients themselves by degrading the chemoattractant.[10] He showed that the spread of cancer cells in melanoma is driven by this mechanism,[1][2] and that cells migrating through a maze can tell the difference between short arms of the maze and long arms because the chemoattractant in a short arm is degraded more rapidly, allowing them to avoid getting lost.[4][3][5]

Insall is a frequent commentator on issues related to science policy,[11][12][13][14] reproducibility,[15] and science publishing.[16][17] He was chosen by secondary school students as the best communicator in the 2012 I'm a Scientist, Get me out of here! competition for cancer researchers.[18]