Guest Editors
Xurui Shen
Fudan University
Dr. Xurui Shen is now a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Hanting Yang’s lab at the Institute for translational brain research (ITBR) of Fudan University. Dr. Shen received her PhD from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2022 and joined Fudan University as a postdoctoral researcher in August 2022. Dr. Shen currently focuses on mitochondrial quality control and ion channels related to neuronal health maintenance. Her previous first author work has been published in Cell research, etc.
Hanting Yang
Fudan University
Dr. Hanting Yang is currently a Principal Investigator at the Institute for translational brain research (ITBR) and Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University. Dr. Yang received her PhD degree from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science, in 2017; she then completed her postdoctoral training at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 2018 to 2021, under the supervision of the Nobel laureates Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan. Dr. Yang was an EMBO fellow funded by the European Molecular Biology Organisation. She was the Research Associate of Darwin College, the University of Cambridge, from 2019 to 2021. Dr. Yang joined Fudan University as Principal Investigator (Professor) and started her own lab in November 2021. Dr. Yang’s group aims to understand the molecular basis of how the lysosomal pathway and mitochondrial quality control mechanisms contribute to neuronal health maintenance. Her previous first-author work has been published in Nature, Science, and other academic journals.
Hao Zhang
Fudan University
Dr Hao Zhang is now an Associate Professor in Dr Hanting Yang’s lab at the Institute for translational brain research (ITBR) of Fudan University. Dr. Zhang received his PhD degree from the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai JiaoTong University, in 2020; he then completed postdoctoral research training in structural biology at Shanghai Institute of Hematology, State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics, National Research Center for Translational Medicine at Shanghai, Ruijin Hospital from 2020 to 2022. Dr. Zhang joined Fudan University as an Associate Professor in August 2022. Dr. Zhang currently focuses on elucidating the molecular basis of chaperone-mediated autophagy and mitochondrial functions that contribute to neuronal health maintenance. His previous first-author work has been published in journals such as Blood, Cancer Communications, Leukemia, Nature Communications, etc.
Collection Overview
In eukaryotic cells, compartmentalization of diverse cellular activities occurs in membrane-bound organelles in a spatially and temporally controlled manner. Earlier reports have shown that organelles and organelle-organelle interactions may serve as crucial hubs in various signaling pathways to regulate cellular metabolism, biogenesis, and homeostasis. Organelle dysfunction is associated with the development and progression of human disease. Maintenance of integrity and functionality of organelles, including endoplasmic reticulum (ER), mitochondria, and lysosomes, are crucial to cellular homeostasis.
Beyond the proteostasis view, it is also critical to consider the common and unique aspects of organelles communicating in the cell. Organelles coordinate their activities by forming membrane contact sites (MCSs). Dysfunctional MCSs are responsible for pathological conditions such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Given the complicated nature of the organelles, it remains challenging to advance the understanding of their physiological roles in proteostasis and quality control pathways.
Intracellular membrane proteins, such as transporters, receptors, and ion channels on the organelle membranes, perform diverse functions to be involved in intracellular signaling pathways and MCSs.
Although substantial progress has developed in illustrating the study of intracellular protein quality control and MCSs, new therapeutic perspectives and translational insights can be understood by a greater understanding of the mechanism through organelle defects and quality control systems. Thus, the technologies to study or manipulate organelle membrane proteins/complex still need to be systematically summarized and continuously optimized.
This methods collection attempts to bring together some of these state-of-the-art methods to assess the organelles, in vivo or in vitro, and provide more options for researchers aiming to investigate protein quality control pathways in organelles/MCSs. Potential topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
- Approaches assess the purity and integrity of isolated organelles
- Novel techniques to study or manipulate organelle’s protein quality control pathways
- Optimized protocols developed for expression and purification of intracellular membrane proteins
- Strategies to illustrate crosstalk between protein quality control and organelle membrane contact sites
- Methods to investigate protein quality control in neuronal axon and dendrite, metabolic reprogramming, cell-cell metabolic cooperation, and redox homeostasis control
- Computational practices (such as machine learning or other bioinformatic analysis) the structure-function relationship
Articles
Abstracts
Live-imaging mitochondria with an automated tool permits studying isoform-specific RAR rescuing of mitochondrial dynamics in an oxidative stress model
Diogo Trigo*1
1Neuroscience and Signalling Laboratory, Institute of Biomedicine (iBiMED), Department of Medical Sciences, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal