Intracellular Compartmentalization
Date:
Thursday, February 16, 2017 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker:
Anne Spang (Biozentrum, University of Basel)
Location:
Mondi Seminar Room 2, Central Building
Series:
Life Sciences Seminar
Host:
Martin Loose
Contact:
SIX Rita
Eukaryotic cells contain membrane-bounded organelles that communicate with each other. These interchange is essential to ensure the correct localization of proteins and lipids to their home organelle and maintain the size and functionality of the cellular organelles. In the past most interorganellar communication was studied in terms of vesicular traffic. A donor compartment forms a transport vesicle containing the address label for the target compartment and cargoes, which need to be transported. While this area still remains very active and lot of these pathways is still not understood, another communication system has recently become the focus of intense studies: interorganellar contact sites. Contacts between two organelles appear to facilitate the exchange of lipids and ions. What this also illustrates is that any organelle in the cell must contain different domains that fulfill specialized functions. i.e. vesicle exit and arrival sites and organelle contact sites. Yet, our understanding how such sites can be formed and how the lifetime is regulated remains still elusive. I will discuss different concepts of compartmentalization.