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SUMMARY:Towards Engineering Developmental Biology: a New Family of Synthet
 ic Cell-Cell Communication Pathways to Control Multicellular Self-Organiza
 tion
DTSTART:20151207T110000
DTSTAMP:20260407T045444Z
UID:99ea6d30399608d9f667cb460ae227e2c779a4aa8d948a5645a26f9b
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Leonardo Morsut\, Ph.D.\, University of California\, San Franc
 isco\, CA (USA)\nBIOENGINEERING SEMINARAbstract:\nDuring development\, com
 plex multicellular structures form based on genetically encoded algorithms
  that specify how cells will collectively interact and regulate each other
 ’s fate. I am developing synthetic biology approaches to write such self
 -organization programs and understand their overall logic. The ability to 
 systematically program the formation of multicellular assemblies (e.g. tis
 sues\, organs\, cell therapy) holds great promise for applications in rege
 nerative medicine.\nTowards this goal\, we have been developing new molecu
 lar tools that allow one to rewire and reprogram cell-cell communication. 
 We have recently engineered a family of orthogonal cell-cell communication
  pathways\, inspired by the mechanism of notch/delta\, which allow a cell 
 to detect molecular signals from its neighbors and\, in response\, induce 
 user-specified transcriptional programs. These pathways do not cross-talk 
 with native pathways or with each other\, thus providing multiple novel ch
 annels for cell-cell communication. We show that these pathways can be use
 d to flexibly construct new multi-cellular programs – they can direct lo
 calized differentiation\, self-sorting behaviors\, and complex pattern for
 mation in epithelial layers. The synthetic receptor platform at the core o
 f these pathways represents a novel set of control points that I plan to e
 xploit to guide self-organization of multicellular ensembles in structural
  and functional tissues with user-defined high level properties e.g. shape
 \, resistance to injury\, regeneration.Bio:\n2012 – current: UC San Fran
 cisco\, Postdoctoral scholar\, Cellular and molecular pharmacology (Wendel
 l Lim Lab)\n2005 – 2011: Università degli Studi di Padova\, Bachelor of
  Science (BS)\, Mathematics\n2007 – 2010: Università degli Studi di Pad
 ova\, PhD\, Genetics and molecular biology of development\n1999 – 2004: 
 Università degli Studi di Padova\, BS and MS\, Medical biotechnology
LOCATION:SV1717.1 http://map.epfl.ch/?room=sv1717.1
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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