DynaMo Seminar: Federica Brandizzi

Dynamo Center of Excelence is pleased to host the following seminar on Monday 6 May 2013. Everybody is welcome.

Federica Brandizzi

Michigan State University

Functional and morphological integrity of the plant Golgi

The secretory pathway is vital to the inner workings of the cell during growth and in response to stress; it consists of several organelles that synthesize, shuttle, and store a large part of the cell’s proteins, lipids, and sugars. In plants, the activities of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus, the initial organelles of the secretory pathway, are also fundamental for the synthesis and deposition of the building blocks of energy-rich compartments such as the cell wall and storage vacuole. How plant cells maintain efficient compartmentalization and control the delivery and integration of biomolecules into specialized organelles in the secretory pathway are fundamental and open questions. Both the ER and the Golgi have unique architecture and functions, which are maintained despite exchange of membranes and lumenal contents with other organelles. In our lab we aim to identify the mechanisms governing the morphology and function of the ER and the Golgi and defining the extent to which their architecture influences their function. To do so we have developed two screens that will be presented in this talk. One screen is based on a proteomics approach on Golgi-enriched fraction from cotton fibers. A different screen is based on confocal microscopy analyses of Arabidopsis seedlings expressing ER and Golgi markers as well as bulk-flow markers. Through our work we are identifying novel genes and mutations that uncover new information on the mechanisms for the integrity of the ER and the Golgi with respect to other organelles, cytoskeleton and flow of biosynthetic cargo. Our most recent findings will be presented in this talk.

Federica Brandizzi is Professor at Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University. Dr. Brandizzi received her BS in Biology and PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Rome, Italy. She spent the next 6 years at Oxford Brookes University, UK, as a postdoctoral fellow. From 2003-2006, Dr. Brandizzi joined the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, as an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair. Since 2006, Dr. Brandizzi moved to Michigan State University and became a faculty member at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, from 2011 as Professor. In 2013 Dr. Brandizzi was awarded permanent membership of the Membrane Biology and Protein Processing Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes of Health.