Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Research Seminar – Kelsie Eichel, Ph.D.

“How to Organize a Neuron: Insights from C. elegans to Humans”

Kelsie Ann Eichel, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Laboratory of Dr. Kang Shen
Departments of Biology and Pathology
Stanford University

Faculty Host: Dr. Karen Lyons

In-Person
Hershey Hall 158

For more information, please contact Stacey Antoniuk at SAntoniuk@mcdb.ucla.edu.

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Abstract:

Everything our brain does ? each emotion, decision, and action ? starts with a signal from a neuron. To perform this signaling, neurons polarize into distinct axonal and dendritic compartments for sending and receiving signals, respectively, and a loss of polarity is associated with a wide array of pathologies. By developing a C. elegans to human neuron cross-translational platform, I discovered a conserved mechanism at the axon-dendrite boundary in which polarized membrane proteins are actively removed to prevent their entry into the wrong compartment. When this removal mechanism is disrupted,axon-dendrite polarity is lost, and the axon adopts features of the dendrite. My work changes our understanding of how neurons maintain protein polarity and opens new questions about how the neuron builds its polarized architecture.