Dear all,
Prof. Igor Stagljar will be visiting this Friday and giving a talk. The abstract and biography are below. If you are interested in meeting Professor Stagljar, please email me.
Best wishes,
Natasa
Protein Interaction Networks Regulating Cell Signalling in human health and disease
Igor Stagljar, PhD
Professor
Donnelly Centre, Department of Biochemistry & Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
http://www.biochemistry.utoronto.ca/stagljar/
A focus of my lab is to understand the function of the majority of “druggable” human integral membrane proteins involved in cell signaling and membrane transport at a systems level. Despite extensive research in the past decade, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of protein networks associated with these integral membrane proteins because of their complex biochemical features, enormous complexity and multiplicity. This is a major obstacle for designing improved and more targeted therapies, and importantly, understanding the biology of deregulation of these integral membrane proteins which leads to numerous human diseases.
To that end, we are applying an in vivo genetic system previously developed in my lab, called the membrane yeast two-hybrid (MYTH) assay, to identify and characterize protein interactors of all yeast ABC transporters, human receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) as well as the selected cancer stem cell receptors (CSCRs) and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). During my talk, I will discuss exciting new findings indicating that the newly identified RTK-, CSCR- and GPCR-interacting proteins play novel roles in regulating the activity of these integral membrane proteins in vivo and in vitro. Our systematic approach offers an unbiased systems level view that may identify novel drug targets and contribute to therapeutic research.
Selected references
Paumi, C.M., Menendez, J., Arnoldo, A., Engels, K., Iyer, K., Thaminy, S., Georgiev, O., Barral, Y., Michaelis, S., and Stagljar, I. (2007) Mol Cell 26, 15-25.
Gisler, S.M., Kittanakom, S., Fuster, D., Radanovic, T., Wong, V., Bertic, M., Hall, R.A., Engels, K., Murer, H., Biber, J., Markovic, D., Moe, O.W., and Stagljar, I (2008) Mol Cell Proteomics 7, 1362-1377.
Lissanu Deribe, Y., Schmidt, M., Chandrashaker, A., Curak, J., Milutinovic, N., Buerke, L., Fetchko, M.J., Schmidt, P., Kittanakom, S., Brown, K., Jurisica, I., Blagoev, B., Zerial, M., Stagljar, I.*, and Dikic, I. *(2009) Science Signaling 2, ra84 (* co-corresponding authors).
Snider J, Kittanakom S, Damjanovic D, Curak J, Wong V, and Stagljar I (2010) Nature Protocols 5, 1281-1293.
Petschnigg, J., Snider, J., and Stagljar, I. (2011) Curr Opin Biotechnol 22, 50-58.
Gfeller, D., Butty, F., Wierzbicka, M., Verschueren, E., Vanhee, P., Huang, H., Ernst, A., Dar, N., Stagljar, I., Serrano, L., Sidhu, S.S., Bader, G.D., and Kim, P. M. (2011) Mol Syst Biol 26, 484-495.
Biography:
Igor Stagljar was born in Zagreb, Croatia and educated at the University of Zagreb where he obtained a BSc degree in Molecular Biology. He then moved to Switzerland where he received his MSc & PhD degree in Molecular Biology from the Swiss Federal School of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Afterwards he undertook two post-doctoral positions at the University of Zurich, the first working on RNA polymerase II transcription in mammals, and the second position involved working on various aspects of DNA replication and repair in yeast.
In 2001, Igor was a visiting scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, where he worked in the lab of Dr. Stanley Fields, the inventor of the yeast two-hybrid technology. From 2002 to 2005, Igor maintained an Assistant Professor position at the University of Zurich.
In the summer of 2005, Igor moved to Canada where he accepted an Associate Professor position (with tenure) at the Department of Biochemistry and Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. In 2010, Igor was promoted to the rank of full Professor at the University of Toronto. His lab is located in the Donnelly Centre, a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research centre in the heart of Toronto’s research district.
Igor is an expert on the development of methods to investigate protein-protein interactions. In particular, he is internationally known for the development of the split-ubiquitin Membrane Yeast Two-Hybrid (MYTH) technology, a powerful tool for the identification of protein interactors of integral membrane proteins and one of the key interactive proteomics technologies. This has lead to many groundbreaking discoveries and the elucidation of functions of various membrane proteins involved in human health and disease. Igor is currently involved in major proteomics projects to map how integral membrane proteins interact to produce either healthy or diseased cells.
He is the author of more than 60 PubMed cited scientific papers and is the recipient of several national and international science awards. Igor served as member or scientific officer of many peer review committees and scientific advisory boards for the national and international funding agencies as well as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He is a member of the Editorial board of BioTechniques, Molecular Genetics and Genomics, BMC Biotechnology, Molecular BioSystems and Journal of Molecular Biology.
In addition, Igor is co-founder of Dualsystems Biotech, one of the world-leading interactive proteomics companies whose focus is on protein-protein interaction services, including various yeast-based two-hybrid screenings and mammalian cell-based protein complex identifications.
—
Natasa Przulj, Ph.D.
Lecturer (Assistant Professor)
Department of Computing Tel: +44-(0)207-594-1516
Imperial College London Fax: +44-(0)207-581-8024
180 Queen’s Gate Email: natasha@imperial.ac.uk
LONDON, SW7 2AZ, UK URL: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~natasha/