Abstract
Our research focuses on the processes that mediate and regulate the movement of vesicular carriers throughout cells and the biogenesis of organelles. In particular we study the molecular mechanisms that underlie the cell's sorting machineries responsible for receptor-mediated endocytosis and for secretion, and how they are high jacked by toxins, viruses and bacterial pathogens to enter cells. We also study how organelles form and how during cell division, cells control their size and organelle architecture.

The talk will illustrate our most recent efforts combining high resolution snapshots at atomic and molecular resolution with contemporary imaging tools based on high resolution live-cell fluorescence microscopy with single molecule sensitivity with high temporal resolution and spatial precision, to ‘see’ in three dimensions the molecular events at the plasma membrane responsible for the formation of clathrin-coated pits and coated vesicles -- a conserved "nano-machine" that generates intracellular vesicular carriers in all animals and plants. The talk will also illustrate use of these imaging techniques to study how viruses and cells interact and how cells control size during cell division.