Polo-Like Kinase-1: Activity Measurement and RNAi-Mediated Knockdown

Polo-like kinase-1 (Plk-1) is an important cell cycle regulatory kinase that has been implicated in a multitude of cell cycle events. In this chapter we review those multiple functions of Plk-1 and describe the methods routinely used in our laboratory to purify Plk-1 from cellular lysates and measure Plk-1 kinase activity in vitro. In addition, we describe a method to analyze cell cycle progression after depletion of Plk-1 by RNA-interference in tissue culture cells.