CMCB Life Sciences Seminar: Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Kastritis, University of Halle-Wittenberg/ National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

Host: Markus Mukenhirn (BIOTEC)

Title: "Exploring cellular organization in native cell extracts with high-resolution cryo-EM"

Abstract: Protein-protein complexes underlie all metabolic processes, including cell growth, respiration, signalling and cell death. In my talk, I introduce the concept of visualizing biomolecular complexes in endogenous cellular homogenates, a method which essentially bridges in vitro and in situ molecular analysis. Focusing on analyzing the endogenous pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, a dynamic metabolon of >170 protein subunits responsible for converting pyruvate to acetyl-coA, I highlight its overall architecture by cryo-EM. Integrative structural analysis allows the combined visualization of the metabolon, examining the embedded interactions. These results shed light on the molecular basis of the textbook "link reaction" of cellular respiration at unprecedented detail. Overall, structural findings from increasingly complex cell extract specimens are bound to promote visualization of selectively-enriched metabolic pathways, organized by metabolic supercomplexes, at higher resolutions.