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Join us to celebrate National Postdoc Appreciation Week (#NPAW2021)! This event acknowledges the significant contributions that postdocs make to research and will feature presentations uncovering different aspects of the development of neurodegenerative diseases. After these three unique talks, we will finish the event with a social so that you can have a chance to meet others in the department!
All Wohl-based students, researchers, staff, and postdocs welcome. Drinks, pizza and goody bags provided. Please register one ticket per person.
Please take a LFT / PCR test before attending.
All Wohl-based students, researchers, staff, and postdocs welcome. Drinks, pizza and goody bags provided. Please register one ticket per person.
Please take a LFT / PCR test before attending.
Phase separation and disrupted nucleocytoplasmic transport in neurodegenerative disease
Dr. Dan Solomon
(Postdoctoral Research Associate)
The G4C2 hexanucleotide repeat expansion in the gene C9ORF72 is the most common cause of ALS and FTD. Impaired nucleocytoplasmic transport has emerged as a key mechanism. This cellular process depends on liquid-liquid phase separation. We show the FG (phenylalanine–glycine) nucleoporins spontaneously phase separate into particles that mimic the nuclear pore selectivity barrier. The toxic arginine DPRs seen in disease disrupt both the phase separation behaviour and transport dynamics of these FG-Nup particles.
Picture Perfect
Dr Anny Devoy
(Research Fellow, King's College London)
Answering difficult questions about disease involves diving deep into complex cellular and biochemical processes. More often than not, we find ourselves so focused on the fine details that we forget to look at the big picture – whether gross structural changes in a cell may be contributing or even driving these specific disturbances in biochemical pathways we observe in our experiments. I will discuss how we are trying to combine high resolution imaging with -omics datasets to help us get that ‘big picture’ of disease.
Can diet and exercise help fight the war against Dementia?
Dr Andrea Du Preez
(Research Associate, Neurogenesis & Mental Health lab, King's College London)
Diet and exercise can influence the risk of cognitive decline and dementia through the food metabolome and exercise-triggered endogenous factors. These factors use the blood as a vehicle to then communicate with the brain and might act in concert with hippocampal neurogenesis (i.e., the process by which the brain produces new brain cells) to shape cognitive decline and dementia. I will discuss how poor diet and a lack of exercise could influence the risk of cognitive decline and dementia by potentially modulating hippocampal neurogenesis long before onset.
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