Institute seminar March 25th 12:00 Jørgen Wesche
The institute seminar on Wednesday March 25th was held by Jørgen Wesche from Sjur Olnes' group at the Department of Biochemistry.
Title of his talk:"Intracellular transport of fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) and their receptors".
Time and place: 12:00, Seminar Room, F4, Institute for Cancer Research.
General background information supplied by Jørgen Wesche about the topic of his talk:
Cancer is often associated with changes in cell signalling. Abnormal expression or mutations of proteins involved in signalling is found in varioushuman cancers and provide targets for the development of new drugs against cancer. We study one class of signalling molecules, called the fibroblast growth factors (FGF) and their tyrosine kinase receptors (FGFRs).
We are focusing on an important aspect of FGF biology, namely the internalization and the intracellular transport of the growth factors and their receptors and try to relate this to their signalling properties. Growth factor signalling is regulated by the number of receptors present on the cell-surface. Down-regulation of the signal emitted involves internalisation of the receptors and further degradation inside the cell. Impairment of this system for down-regulation can lead to aberrant signalling. In addition, growth factors have been found to signal from intracellular vesicles and not only from the cell surface. Basic studies of the intracellular routing are therefore required to understand regulation of proliferation in health and disease.
Links:
Sjur Olnes' laboratory - Protein internalisation
Institute seminars spring 2009