Silvia Sposini is a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London and visiting researcher at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neurosciences in Bordeaux, France
 

Title :Imaging the dynamics of neuromodulator receptor trafficking

 

Summary:

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest family of signalling receptors and the main targets of approved drugs. In the nervous system, they bind neuromodulators such as dopamine and noradrenaline to initiate signalling cascades that culminate in the modulation of neuronal functions such as excitability, synaptic transmission and plasticity, and, ultimately, behaviour.

Signalling from neuromodulator GPCRs occurs across extremely accurate spatial and temporal scales. For this, the tight but flexible tuning of GPCR signalling requires highly precise regulatory mechanisms, namely membrane trafficking.

Evidence for the physiological relevance of GPCR trafficking exists in neurons but remains scarce. Moreover, a detailed understanding of how these mechanisms are regulated and which specific cellular function they contribute to, is still missing.

My talk will focus on the information we have gathered so far on neuromodulator receptor trafficking at the molecular scale, with a focus on the tools we have implemented to achieve this. I will also cover our current efforts in understanding how trafficking of GPCRs to intracellular locations shapes neuronal physiology.