You are invited to attend this seminar hosted by the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology:
Date: Friday, 21 July 2023
Time: 2.30PM – 3.30PM
Venue: IMCB Seminar Room 03-46, Level 3 Proteos, Biopolis, Singapore 138673 (Physical)
Speaker: Prof Vivek Malhotra, ICREA
Host: Prof Hong Wanjin, IMCB
A TANGO for skin and bones
Abstract
How cells assemble the glue or the extracellular matrix (ECM) that binds cells to form skin, tissues of the specific form, and bones. In order to address these lofty objectives, we first need to understand the mechanism by which cells secrete ECM components like the collagens. The problem is that they are too bulky for secretion by the conventional vesicular transport pathway. Our discovery of TANGO1, a ubiquitously expressed, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) exit site resident, transmembrane protein has made the pathway of collagen secretion amenable to molecular analyses. Surprisingly, the export of collagens is not by vesicles but instead by transient tunnels. This allows rapid transport of collagen from the lumen of ER to the next compartment of the secretory pathway. TANGO1 is genetically mutated in patients with collagenopathies and we can now target TANGO1 to control collagen hyper secretion dependent scarring and tissue fibrosis. Our findings are helping in understanding the mechanism by which cells secrete the right quantity and quality of ECM components to make tissues and bones.
Biography
Vivek Malhotra is one of world's leaders on protein secretion and cellular compartmentation. His work is focused on how cellular compartments are made and communicate with each other, and how cells duplicate their compartments during cell division. He has been studying these processes since the late 80s and is acknowledged worldwide for his creativity and novel findings. He obtained his Ph.D from Oxford and was a postdoc at Stanford University. He was a professor at University of California San Diego for 18 years. He joined the Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona as a coordinator of the Cell and Developmental Biology Programme and ICREA Research Professor.
Pirie‐Reid Scholar; Damon‐Runyon Walter‐Winchell Fellow; American Cancer Society Senior Fellow; Basil O'Connor Scholar; Senior Investigator of American Heart Association and Sandler's program for asthma research; Elected fellow of AAAS, ASCB, EMBO; ASBMB‐MERCK award; Miller visiting professor, UC Berkeley; Humboldt award; ERC advanced and ERC Synergy grant.
ALL ARE WELCOME (No registration required)
For upcoming seminars in IMCB, please visit our website at https://www.a-star.edu.sg/imcb