We are glad to announce that Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (RKMVERI) will be conducting a special colloquium on “Visualizing the invisible cellular world: How do cells build their support structures and Highways?” on 15 June 2023, 11 am at Seminar Hall, Narendrapur Campus.
Speaker : Dr. Saikat Chowdhury, Senior Scientist, CSIR-CCMB, Hyderabad
Co-ordinator: Abhijit Chakrabarti
Abstract
A lot of the finer intricacies of the cell are almost invisible to the naked eye. However, to understand how different processes inside cells occur it is important for us to visualize them. The support structures of the cells are made up of cytoskeletal elements. Unlike the inanimate world, these are highly dynamic and are tightly regulated inside the cells. These cytoskeletal elements form networks that generate forces that are harnessed by cells for several cellular processes such as cellular motility, morphogenesis, endocytosis, and cell division. They also form highways or tracts for cellular cargo carriers or motor proteins to transport a wide variety of cargos between specific locations in the cell. Any deregulation in these systems can cause several diseases and can be lethal for the organism. Therefore, it becomes critical for us to understand these processes. Using electron microscopy and structural biology we have revealed how cells construct these cytoskeletal networks and how motor proteins are adapted or organized to carry cargoes on the cytoskeletal tracts. In this lecture I will take you through the process of how we visualize these structures using electron microscopy and how these have helped us obtain three dimensional (3D) structures of these large cellular macromolecular assemblies. From these structures we now have a better understanding of how cells build such ultrastructure and how the entire process is precisely regulated.