This talk is an activity from the FEBS Junior Section, an initiative set up by students and young researchers from some of the FEBS Constituent Societies. Each month members of the FEBS Junior Section organize an online event on either a research or a career topic. This talk was coordinated by the Polish Junior Section (the junior section of the Polish Biochemical Society, PTBioch).

Speaker: Dr hab. Sebastian Glatt, Max Planck Research Group, Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
Topic: “tRNAslational control of eukaryotic gene expression”
Time: 11 July 2024, 19:00 (CEST)
For more information: See the abstract and biosketch below and visit Dr hab. Dr hab Sebastian Glatt institutional and lab webpages.

Abstract

My Max Planck Research Group studies different translation control mechanisms, which regulate the production of specific sets of proteins by chemical modifications of tRNA molecules. Every protein in the cell is produced by the ribosome, which uses transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to translate the sequence information coded in mRNAs into correctly assembled poly-peptide chains. The lab is focusing on understanding the molecular mechanisms that lead to the specific base modifications in anticodons of tRNAs. These modifications have a strong influence on the efficiency and accuracy of the codon-anticodon pairing and therefore regulate the translational rates and folding dynamics of protein synthesis. Recent findings have shown that alterations of these modification pathways play important roles in the onset of certain neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. We mainly use X-ray crystallography (MX) and cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to obtain snapshots of the involved macromolecular machines and analyse their reaction intermediates at atomic resolution. Subsequently, we employ different complementary in vitro and in vivo approaches to validate and challenge our structural observations.

Furthermore, we have started working on other (t)RNA modification pathways and elucidate the structure of folded RNA molecules directly by cryo-EM. We aim to understand how these post-transcriptional modifications affect ribosomal decoding and translation elongation by directly imaging translating ribosomes at atomic resolution. Last but not least, we develop novel structural, biochemical and biophysical approaches to study structured RNA domains. In summary, our work contributes to the fundamental understanding of eukaryotic gene expression and its complex regulatory mechanisms.

Biosketch

Sebastian Glatt studied at the University of Vienna and did his PhD at the pharmaceutical industry. In 2008, he joined the Structural and Computational unit at EMBL Heidelberg as a postdoc. There he transformed from a pure cell biologist into a protein biochemist, crystallographer and electron microscopist. Since September 2015, he leads his own independent Max Planck Research Group at the Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He established and maintained fruitful scientific collaborations with leading labs around the world and he has published in highly prestigious scientific journals. He has received several prestigious grants, including the ERC Consolidator grant 2020, the EMBO YIP/IG as well as several grants from FNP and NCN. He was the laurate of the NCN award 2021 for life sciences and his team received the Krakow City Prize 2020. He is not only leading his international research team, but he is also deputy director of science at MCB and founded the “National Cryo-EM facility“ at the Solaris synchrotron in Krakow.”

The FEBS Junior Section

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Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash