2020 Guthikonda Lectureship: Professor Alanna Schepartz, UC Berkeley

2020 Guthikonda Lectureship: Professor Alanna Schepartz, UC Berkeley (Host: Carolyn Bertozzi)

Schedule:

4:30 – Introduction by Carolyn Bertozzi

4:35-  Alanna Schepartz’s lecture

5:15 – Q&A Moderated by Carolyn Bertozzi

About the Lecture: "Delivery to Cells and Animals"

The inefficient delivery of enzymes and other proteins into interior regions of mammalian cells limits their potential as research tools and therapeutics. This lecture will describe the discovery of a discrete protein motif that guides proteins and enzymes into the cytosol and/or nucleus by promoting efficient endosomal escape, a single-molecule tool that quantifies this trafficking event in live cells with accuracy and precision, and a genome screen that successfully identified the molecular machinery responsible for this process. Our work provides new insight into how cells can purposefully respond to unnatural endocytic cargo and how this knowledge can be exploited to improve the cytosolic delivery of diverse proteins and enzymes.

About the Speaker:

Alanna Schepartz is the T. Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair and a Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has received numerous awards for her research and is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. Current projects focus on (1) repurposing the ribosome to biosynthesize sequence-defined chemical polymers and polyketides; (2) exploring and improving novel tools for trafficking proteins to the cytosol and nucleus for therapeutic applications; (3) understanding the mechanism by which chemical information is transported through cellular membranes; and (4) developing new probes and fluorophores to image organelle dynamics at super-resolution for highly extended times and in multiple colors.