Eivind Valen: "Starting your message - tracking the dynamics of translation initiation"
Abstract:
The efficiency by which an mRNA produces proteins depends on the number of ribosomes that it can recruit, their success of the ribosomes in navigating its 5’ untranslated region (UTR) and whether they recognize its start codon. Initiation of translation is a rate-limiting step in protein synthesis and key to gene expression control. Despite this centrality, it remains poorly understood. Here, I introduce a method to capture the transcriptome-wide occupancy of scanning, initiating, elongating and terminating ribosome complexes to track these across all transcripts. This new perspective allows us to deconstruct the regulatory contributions from the three stages of initiation: ribosome recruitment, scanning of the 5’ UTR and recognition of the start codon, and ultimately identify key regulatory mechanisms at each step.
Emmett McCormack: "Avatars and Imaging in preclinical development"
Abstract:
The current dogma of rushing novel pharmaceuticals through inappropriate preclinical models is one of the major reasons for the limited clinical penetration of novel drugs. Despite this, the preclinical step in drug development is generally overlooked and models are chosen to fit the desired result, rather than using them as valuable tools to drive clinical development. Here I will present our groups ongoing work on development, characterisation and application of clinically relevant models and multimodal molecular imaging strategies, and how we believe judicious application of these technologies can expedite clinical development of novel therapeutics.
For information on how to join the seminar, please email biotuesday@biotek.uio.no