Biological Sciences Seminars

From epithelial cell polarity to retinal degeneration - lessons from Drosophila’

by Prof. Elisabeth Knust (Max-Planck Institute, Dresden, Germany)

Wednesday, January 9, 2013 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( AG-69 )
Description
Polarity is a fundamental property of many cells and is important for various basic cellular functions, such as asymmetric cell division, cell migration or directed signaling. The evolutionarily conserved Crumbs protein complex is important for the maintenance of cell polarity is epithelial cells and for preventing retinal degeneration, both in Drosophila and vertebrates. It has been show to act a an apical determinant, which ensures apical integrity during morphogenesis of epithelial tissues and homeostasis of photoreceptor cells. Recently obtained data shed some light on the cell biological mechanisms of its function.