School of Biomedical Sciences cordially invites you to join the following seminar:

Speaker: Dr Carsten Janke & Dr Maria Magiera, Institut Curie, Orsay, France
Talk Title: Diversifying cytoskeletal functions with the tubulin code – from molecules to organisms

Date: 16 August 2024 (Friday)
Time: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, G/F, William M.W. Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road
Host: Professor Jeff Ti

Biography

- Carsten Janke holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Leipzig, where he also performed his PhD with Thomas Arendt. He then worked with Elmar Schiebel at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, after which he then moved to the CRBM in Montpellier to work on the tubulin code as a researcher with Bernard Eddé. Since 2005, Carsten heads an independent team, which moved to the Institut Curie in 2010. Carsten discovered key enzymes involved in tubulin posttranslational modifications and initiated the functional exploration of the tubulin code. He was elected EMBO member in 2014 and coordinates an ERC synergy grant since 2022. Carsten’s current work focusses on the function of the tubulin code from the single molecule to the whole organism.

- Maria Magiera is a CNRS researcher working at the Institut Curie in Orsay, France. She studied Biochemistry in Poland and the UK and did her PhD on the control of the cell cycle with Etienne Schwob in Montpellier, France. After a first postdoc on mechanisms of neuronal apoptosis with Solange Desagher, she joined Carsten Janke’s team to decipher the role of posttranslational modifications of microtubules in neuronal biology. Using in vitro, cell-based and whole organism approaches she demonstrated that posttranslational polyglutamylation of microtubules tunes neuronal functions and can lead to neurodegeneration in mice and humans. Maria received the French-German Forcheur – Jean Marie Lehn prize in 2019.

Abstract

Microtubules are highly versatile cytoskeletal fibres that fulfil essential functions in every eukaryotic cell. Despite this functional diversity, microtubules and their basic building blocks – the tubulin proteins - are highly conserved throughout evolution. One of the key questions in biology is thus how microtubules can adapt to different functions. I will present how a mechanism called the Tubulin Code contributes to the functional diversification of the microtubule cytoskeleton.

Tubulin is expressed from different genes (isotypes) and abundantly posttranslationally modified. While this molecular diversity does in most cases only subtly change the behaviour of the microtubule cytoskeleton at the molecular level, it appears that it has strong impacts at the organism and lifetime scale.

Our lab uses mouse models in which single or multiple tubulin-modifying enzymes are knocked out to determine their physiological functions. We demonstrated that alterations in the tubulin modification glutamylation causes neurodegeneration with defects in axonal cargo transport. Changes in glutamylation can also lead to male infertility and retina degeneration. When we abolished another modification, glycylation, we observed male subfertility in mice with sperm swimming along abnormal trajectories. These finding strongly underpin the role of the tubulin code for organism homeostasis. Our current focus is to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying those physiological functions, which we do in a combination of in-vitro reconstitution and cell-biology experiments.

ALL ARE WELCOME
Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to contact Miss Crystal Chan at 3917 6830.