生命科学学院学术报告
题目：Cryo-EM/ET, a Tool to Dissect Structural Mechanisms of Neurodegenerative Diseases
演讲人：郭强
Postdoc，Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Germany
时间：2018年5月24日15:30-16:30
地点：金光生命科学大楼411
摘要：
The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2040 neurodegenerative disorders will overtake cancer to become the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease. The major risk factor for many of these ailments is age. The global population aged 60 or over in 2017 is 962 million and expected to more than double by 2050. Lacking causal therapies, these disorders would pose medical and socioeconomic problems of an enormous proposition.
The formation of protein aggregates is associated with multiple neurodegenerative disorders. For example, intracellular tau and extracellular Aβ, α-synuclein, and mutant Huntingtin aggregates respectively accumulate in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Huntington’s disease (HD). All these proteins are sequence-unrelated but form similar highly ordered amyloid aggregates, however, the mechanisms how aggregation process affects cell function and viability remain enigmatic. Mutations, stress conditions and modifications predispose proteins to misfold and aggregate, which would have two faces: loss of critical physiological functions and gain of a toxic function. Here I will show the in situ structure of ALS related poly-GA aggregates and the in vitro structure of HD related Huntingtin to elucidate the mechanisms of toxicity behind the deposition of aggregates in both gain and loss of function aspect.
欢迎各位老师同学积极参加！