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

Michael Lawson

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.

normal mRNA versus defective mRNA
Fig.: Normal mRNAs are typically released after translation and free to be translated many more times, whereas defective mRNAs are instead shunted for decay.

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.

Seminar Schedule
DateTitleSpeaker and Affiliation
March 19, 2025Defining the Pathways of Eukaryotic Translational Quality ControlDr. Michael Lawson, UCLA
March 26, 2025The "Rippled" Beta-Sheet: An Old Theory by Pauling and Corey Inspires New BiomaterialsDr. Jevgenij Raskatov, UC Santa Cruz
April 9, 2025Fundamental Studies of Microporous Polymers and their Applications in BiomedicineDr. James Bour, Wayne State University
April 16, 2025Part 1: Some Studies with Chiral Compounds and Stereoselection;
Part 2: Organophosphorus Compounds as Butyrylcholinesterase Inhibitors		Dr. Ken Nakayama, CSU Long Beach
April 23, 2025TBADr. Alina Schimpf, UC San Diego
April 30, 2025TBADr. Xia Yang, UCLA
May 2, 2025Predicting Thermoelectric Performance with Artificial IntelligenceDr. Holger Kleinke, University of Waterloo
May 7, 2025Moiré excitons in van der Waals MaterialsDr. Gang Lu, CSU Northridge

Previous Seminars

Previous Spring 2025 Seminars
DateTitleSpeaker and Affiliation
March 12, 2025Intra and extracellular mechanisms regulating AMPA receptor trafficking and synaptic dockingDr. Javier Diaz Alonso, UC Irvine
March 5, 2025Chemical Approaches to Perturb and Illuminate Biological ProcessesDr. Chao Zhang, USC
February 26, 2025Chemical and Physical Properties of Independence Day Fireworks Aerosol Particle Emissions in Southern CaliforniaDr. Daniel Curtis, CSU Fullerton
February 19, 2025Single molecule investigation of liquid-liquid and liquid-solid phase separation of amyloid proteinsDr. Kanchan Garai, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, India
February 12, 2025Bio-Integrated Nanoelectronics for Precision Medicine and BiomanufacturingDr. Deependra Ban, UC San Diego
February 5, 2025Dynamically Tunable Plasmonic Surfaces using Oscillatory Electric FieldsDr. Regina Ragan, UC Irvine
January 29, 2025Beginning to understand light-mediated Ni catalysis using physical organic techniques and data scienceDr. Ana Bahamonde, UC Riverside

The Seminar Archive has Department Seminars from previous semesters.

The Department Seminar is supported by The Allergan Foundation.