BME Seminar Series
Presents

Ian Macara, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Microbiology
University of Virginia

Using Testable Computer Models to Understand Protein Traffic Between the Nucleus and Cytoplasm

Friday, April 6, 2007
2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
BME Lecture Hall (Room 1041), MR-5

ABSTRACT
The compartmentalization of the eukaryotic cell is critical to many functions. The nuclear envelope, for instance, is essential to regulate the access to the genome and to separate translation from transcription. Millions of molecules per minute enter and leave each cell nucleus. The machinery that controls this traffic has been studied in detail, but integration and control of the many components of the machinery are not well understood. We have taken a computational approach to create bottom-up models of nucleo-cytoplasmic traffic, and have experimentally tested predictions made by the model. Strikingly, several counter-intuitive predictions turned out to be correct. The power of the computational approach is that it can reveal the underlying mechanisms that cause this counter-intuitive behavior, and suggest experiments to test these mechanisms.
References:
Smith et al. (2000) Systems analysis of Ran transport into the nucleus. Science 295: 488-491.
Riddick et al. (2005) A systems analysis of importin-a/b mediated nuclear protein import. J. Cell Biol. 168: 1027-1038
Riddick et al. (2007) Mol Sys Biol (in press).