Date: Friday, 8 March 2019

Venue: Seminar Room 4, G/F
Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building
21 Sassoon Road, Hong Kong

Time: 5:00 p.m.

Title: The Role of Parvalbumin Interneurons in Fear Conditioning
Speaker: Miss LI Xiaoyang (PhD candidate)

Summary:
Fear conditioning is a type of associative learning. It is believed that the neural circuits involve in fear conditioning relies on both excitatory pyramidal neurons (PNs) and inhibitory neurons. It has been demonstrated that Parvalbumin expressing interneurons (PVINs) play a key role for auditory-cued fear conditioning in the auditory cortex, however, its role in the frontal cortex is still not clear. Previous study using two-photon in vivo imaging in the frontal association cortex (FrA) showed that fear conditioning results in dendritic spine elimination in layer V PNs. Here we aim to use in vivo two-photon imaging to investigate the structural and functional plasticity of PN dendritic spines and PVIN axonal boutons simultaneously. Our preliminary data showed that fear conditioning not only increase the dendritic spine elimination in FrA, there were also changes in PVIN boutons plasticity associated with fear learning. Future studies aim to investigate the structural and functional plasticity of both dendritic spines and PVIN axonal boutons in fear memory acquisition and consolidation and dissect the role of PVINs through chemogenetics and optogenetics manipulation of PVINs and calcium imaging in awake and behaving mice during fear acquisition and consolidation.

Title: Identification and characterization of the interactome of core Planar cell polarity (PCP) protein Vangl2
Speaker: Miss LIN Xiaochen (PhD candidate)

Summary:
Planar cell polarity (PCP) is a major type of cell polarity, which regulates coordinated polarized cell behaviors during tissue morphogenesis and organogenesis. Disruption of PCP pathway leads to a variety of severe human diseases, ranging from neural tube defects, skeletal dysplasias, epilepsy to cancer metastasis. The asymmetric localized core PCP proteins such as Vangl2 is essential for the establishment of PCP. However, the downstream effectors of these core PCP proteins that help to regulate cell behaviors remain to be characterized. In this study, we utilized BioID system to identify novel interacting partners of Vangl2. Among all identified candidates, we found that Mark3 can interact with and might phosphorylate Vangl2 at its C terminus. This phosphorylation can increase Vangl2’s interaction with Scrib, a key apical-basal polarity protein, and such interaction is important for convergent extension process and synaptogenesis.

ALL ARE WELCOME