Bil Clemons (Caltech)

Structural Insights into the Targeting of Tail-Anchored Membrane Proteins to the ER
Date
Mar 1, 2017, 12:00 pm12:00 pm
Location
Thomas Laboratory, 003
Audience
Free and open to the university community and the public.

Speakers

Bil Clemons
Professor
California Institute of Technology

Details

Event Description

Tail-anchor (TA) membrane proteins are an important and diverse class that are unable to be targeted via the co-translational SRP pathway. Instead, recent discoveries have identified factors directly involved in targeting these proteins to the ER. In yeast, these proteins form the GET pathway. Our lab has focused on structural and mechanistic studies of these proteins. The pathway as we posit begins with cytoplasmic chaperones that deliver the TA-proteins to Sgt2, which routes the proteins to Get3 via a Get4/Get5 hetero-tetramer. Get3 then forms a stable complex with the TA and delivers the proteins to the ER membrane. We have characterized these complexes using structural biology and biochemistry. I will frame a discussion of the pathway from our unique structural perspective including our recent insights into the more complicated mammalian system. For the human system, we demonstrate that the unique component Bag6 is not a canonical BAG protein and its TA targeting function can be localized to a minimal complex including a C-terminal fragment, Ubl4A and TRC35. This separates the targeting and degradation functions of Bag6 providing an explanation for some of the known biological roles.

Sponsor
Zemer Gitai, Department of Molecular Biology
Event Category
Butler Seminar Series