The Astonishing Story of Complex Cells
ABSTRACT :
This is an exciting time to study life's origins. New voyages of exploration across continents and oceans have uncovered an incredible diversity of cellular forms, while submarines probing deep-sea vents have found hints of primordial cells seemingly unchanged for billions of years. What drove those earliest cells to make the leap from a streamlined prokaryotic cell plan to the complex and versatile eukaryotic design? Eukaryotic cells are defined by their membrane traffic systems. The apparatus of nuclei, mitochondria and endomembrane organelles connected by vesicular transport is completely absent in prokaryotes. This system allows eukaryotes to sample their environment, change shape, and communicate by contact, traits that are essential for organised sexual reproduction and multicellularity. Understanding the origins of compartmentalised membrane traffic is therefore key to understanding eukaryote evolution. How is the membrane traffic system assembled through dynamic protein interactions and information flow? How did it get this way over billions of years of evolution? How does it benefit the cell to have such a system? We bring together threads from biology, physics and computer science to weave the story of the past, present and future of cellular life.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Mukund Thattai obtained a B.A. in physics from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2004 he has been on the faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India, and is a member of the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines. Dr. Thattai has pioneered the use of methods from physics and theoretical computer science to address fundamental questions in cell biology and has made important contributions to the field of synthetic biology. His present research deals with the architecture and evolution of eukaryotic cells. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize 2024 in Physical Sciences.