Hot Topics in Bionanoscience
Course description: Speakers from all over the world are invited to present pedagogical introductions to their field with an emphasis on basic concepts. Apart from an introductory lecture, the participants of this course will have an additional discussion with the invited speaker. During that extra hour, they will discuss a recent paper and the holy grails of the field.
The first hour is a lecture and open for everyone to attend (in this case this BN seminar on "Towards the design principles of cell polarity" at 12:30-13:30). The second hour is reserved as a discussion hour with the lecturer for the registered class of PhD students and postdocs.
Audience: Registered PhD students and postdocs (see registration form below).
Credits: Those participants who attended (pro-actively) a Hot Topics session will be awarded 1 Graduate School Credit (GSC).
Preparation: PhD students who have registered for the Hot Topics course need to prepare for the session by reading the articles listed below.
Date: Thursday 24 November 2022
Speaker: prof. Dolf Weijers (Wageningen University & Research)
Host: Marianne Bauer
Required reading: Participants are required to prepare for this session by reading the following papers (also as download-able files below):
- Plant cell polarity as the nexus of tissue mechanics and morphogenesis (review, Nature Plants, 2021);
- DIX Domain Polymerization Drives Assembly of Plant Cell Polarity Complexes (Cell, 2020);
- A SOSEKI-based coordinate system interprets global polarity cues in Arabidopsis (Nature Plants, 2019).
Abstract of the BN seminar: Cells have the intrinsic capacity to polarize along axes. In single-celled organisms, polarization is important for migration and division, while in multicellular organisms, it underlies 3D development. While all multicellular organisms rely on cell polarity, their last common ancestor was unicellular. Hence, it is unclear whether there are common principles, either shared by ancestry, or by convergent evolution, across lineages. Our team focuses on the fundamental mechanisms underlying multicellular development in the plant kingdom. We have recently discovered a key component of cellular polarity in plants, and found that this proteins – SOSEKI – structurally and functionally resembles a key animal cell polarity protein. Through structural, functional and comparative approaches, we find that protein polymerization is a shared principle underlying cell polarization across kingdoms. This highlights the importance of deep evolutionary and comparative approaches towards understanding core biochemical and biophysical principles underlying the organization of cells in a multicellular context. I will present our recent progress in exploring core principles in cell polarity.
Registration
You can register for the course by filling in the form below. Your place at the course will be confirmed via email before the start of the Hot Topics session. In case there are too many registrants, a selection will be made based on first-come-first-served.
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