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SUMMARY:"Under the skin: Decoding the molecular basis of touch sensation
 ”
DTSTART:20160407T130000
DTEND:20160407T143000
DTSTAMP:20260916T064637Z
UID:9b795e37ab4b8d0fd746ebb67684e86018fe9b194e2a22284db3ed1b
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr Paul Heppenstall EMBL Monterotondo\, Italy\nAbstract:\nThe 
 sense of touch and pain is fundamentally important for life. However\, how
  force is sensed at the molecular level is largely unknown. At its most fu
 ndamental level\, touch sensation requires the translation of mechanical e
 nergy into mechanosensitive ion channel opening\, thereby generating elect
 rochemical signals. Here I describe our work on understanding how the cyto
 skeleton\, in particular microtubules\, influences touch sensation. Focusi
 ng on conditional knockout mice for the α-tubulin acetyltransferase Atat1
 \, I will show how these mice display profound deficits in their ability t
 o detect mechanical stimuli\, and are largely insensitive to mechanical to
 uch and pain. I will explore the mechanistic basis of this phenotype\, sho
 wing how acetylated tubulin contributes to the stiffness of sensory neuron
 s. This simple physical property reduces the ability of neurons to transdu
 ce mechanical stimuli\, which in turn has fundamental consequences for how
  an organism detects its environment.
LOCATION:BCH 4310 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BCH%204310
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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