
The Molecular & Cellular Neuroscience Seminar Series
Description
Cells self-organize by continuously remodeling internal membrane compartments that move and sort signaling, structural, and metabolic cargo. Our goal is to understand how specialized cells like neurons deploy membrane-remodeling machinery to build and regulate these highly dynamic membrane structures. Using the fruit fly Drosophila as a primary model, we combine in vivo imaging of membrane traffic, mechanistic biochemistry, phenotypic analysis of mutants lacking this machinery, and evidence from disease models to approach these cell biological questions from multiple angles.
Speaker Bio
Our lab is focused on understanding how neurons set up elaborate structures that are tailored to send and receive electrical signals over large distances and through complex networks of connections. Neurons undergo dynamic structural changes in response to external growth cues during development as well as learning and memory, and die back in the absence of positive growth cues. These growth cues are received at the cell surface and are trafficked into the cell via a network of membrane-bound compartments called endosomes.
We still do not understand the identity of the internal compartments from which growth cues signal, the special properties of those compartments that enable signaling to occur, and ultimately how the hundreds of proteins that make up the membrane traffic machinery can themselves be regulated to tune signaling up or down. These receptor trafficking events are implicated in neuronal diseases ranging from neurodegenerative disease to mental retardation and addiction, underlining the health importance of understanding how signal transduction is modulated by intracellular membrane traffic in neurons.
We use a combination of biochemistry, genetics, and live imaging in the fruit fly nervous system to unravel the molecular mechanisms by which the traffic of signaling receptors that control the architecture of synapses is regulated by interacting networks of membrane remodeling proteins.