About
Genetics and Physiology of Hearing/Neuroscience Lab Seminar
Dr. Graham THOMAS
(Center for Cellular Dynamics, PennState University, USA)
“A Spectrin-bound phosphatase bridges Crumbs-mediated polarity and Hippo-mediated growth”
invited by Aziz El-Amraoui – Contact : aziz.el-amraoui@pasteur.fr
Abstract :
Spectrin does more than you thought in places you didn’t expect, and can no longer be regarded as a simple F-actin crosslinker. While formation of a membrane skeleton network in conjunction with F-actin like that initially described in the red blood cell or in the terminal web or more recently in axons does occur, these are far from ubiquitous and sometimes very dynamic. In non-erythroid tissues multiple roles in endomembrane trafficking, polarity, growth and DNA repair have all been described, while we have explicitly challenged the importance of network formation. In this talk I will describe how apical bH-spectrin modulates both apicobasal polarity and cell growth in epithelial cells in a pathway that appears to be intimately tied to the endomembrane system.