Department Seminar
Upcoming Seminar
Defining the Pathways of Eukaryotic Translational Quality Control
Dr. Michael Lawson, UCLA
March 19, 2025
4:00pm-5:00pm in HSCI-105

Our research examines how protein synthesis concludes on normal and defective mRNAs. Understanding how these processes are choregraphed is crucial for human health; for example, 11% of all heritable human diseases are caused by premature stop codons. As a postdoctoral fellow, I defined the molecular events that liberate polypeptides from ribosomes as translation concludes on normal mRNAs. Using an in vitro reconstituted yeast translation system and single-molecule assays, I tracked the interplay of eukaryotic release factors (eRF1 and eRF3) with ribosomes halted at stop codons. I discovered that eRF1 and eRF3 act together to quickly recognize stop codons and elicit termination via a tightly regulated process that resembles how ribosomes select proper tRNAs in translation elongation, which explains how translation termination is fast yet also specific for stop codons. Our research group at UCLA now uses single-molecule and structural approaches to watch translation unfold on defective mRNAs to understand the molecular events used to evaluate mRNAs and prevent the repeated synthesis of toxic proteins.

Seminars are held on Wednesdays at 4:00pm. All are invited to attend.
Seminar Coordinator
For information and suggestions about our Department Seminar series, please contact the seminar coordinator:
Dr. Fangyuan Tian
Fangyuan.Tian@csulb.edu
Schedule
The following schedule is for Spring 2025.
Date | Title | Speaker and Affiliation |
---|---|---|
March 19, 2025 | Defining the Pathways of Eukaryotic Translational Quality Control | Dr. Michael Lawson, UCLA |
March 26, 2025 | The "Rippled" Beta-Sheet: An Old Theory by Pauling and Corey Inspires New Biomaterials | Dr. Jevgenij Raskatov, UC Santa Cruz |
April 9, 2025 | Fundamental Studies of Microporous Polymers and their Applications in Biomedicine | Dr. James Bour, Wayne State University |
April 16, 2025 | Part 1: Some Studies with Chiral Compounds and Stereoselection; Part 2: Organophosphorus Compounds as Butyrylcholinesterase Inhibitors | Dr. Ken Nakayama, CSU Long Beach |
April 23, 2025 | TBA | Dr. Alina Schimpf, UC San Diego |
April 30, 2025 | TBA | Dr. Xia Yang, UCLA |
May 2, 2025 | Predicting Thermoelectric Performance with Artificial Intelligence | Dr. Holger Kleinke, University of Waterloo |
May 7, 2025 | Moiré excitons in van der Waals Materials | Dr. Gang Lu, CSU Northridge |
Previous Seminars
Date | Title | Speaker and Affiliation |
---|---|---|
March 12, 2025 | Intra and extracellular mechanisms regulating AMPA receptor trafficking and synaptic docking | Dr. Javier Diaz Alonso, UC Irvine |
March 5, 2025 | Chemical Approaches to Perturb and Illuminate Biological Processes | Dr. Chao Zhang, USC |
February 26, 2025 | Chemical and Physical Properties of Independence Day Fireworks Aerosol Particle Emissions in Southern California | Dr. Daniel Curtis, CSU Fullerton |
February 19, 2025 | Single molecule investigation of liquid-liquid and liquid-solid phase separation of amyloid proteins | Dr. Kanchan Garai, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, India |
February 12, 2025 | Bio-Integrated Nanoelectronics for Precision Medicine and Biomanufacturing | Dr. Deependra Ban, UC San Diego |
February 5, 2025 | Dynamically Tunable Plasmonic Surfaces using Oscillatory Electric Fields | Dr. Regina Ragan, UC Irvine |
January 29, 2025 | Beginning to understand light-mediated Ni catalysis using physical organic techniques and data science | Dr. Ana Bahamonde, UC Riverside |
The Seminar Archive has Department Seminars from previous semesters.
The Department Seminar is supported by The Allergan Foundation.