Professor Nia Bryant, Department of Biology, University of York
Wednesday 15th October, 3.45 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1
The high level of evolutionary conservation of membrane trafficking pathways and molecular machinery that regulate them enables the use of yeast genetics to gain insight into perturbations that underlie human diseases. I will discuss how studies of endosomal trafficking in the yeast S. cerevisiaehave furthered our understanding of how insulin regulates glucose uptake into fat an muscle; a process that is defective in the disease states of insulin-resistance and Type 2 diabetes. I will also describe how we are using yeast to understand how mutations in a regulator of endosomal membrane traffic lead to a congenital form of neutropenia; in this case information gleaned from identification of mutations that underlie the disease are also helping us reveal hitherto poorly characterised functions of the endosomal system.