Jay T. Groves, Professor of Chemistry, College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley

Biochemical signaling on membrane surfaces: the roles of space, force, and time

Signal transduction in cells generally originates with receptors in the cell membrane. However, the membrane provides much more than just a starting point for signaling. Downstream signaling processes, even those among cytoplasmic proteins, generally occur in condensed complexes on the membrane surface. The membrane environment introduces numerous mechanisms for reaction modulation, especially including physical effects in spatial organization, mechanical forces and timing that do not exist in 3D solution reactions.

Our lab is advancing membrane control and imaging strategies, which can be applied both in reconstituted systems and in living cells, to examine these complex signaling mechanisms on the membrane surface.

Host: Professor Poul Nissen, Dept. of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University - Director, Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience - DANDRITE, Nordic-EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine