Chemistry and Biochemistry Colloquium | Xyloglucan-synthesizing glycosyltransferases: some updates on their function and organization in Golgi, Nov. 8

The Chemistry and Biochemistry Colloquium series presents Dr. Olga Zabotina discussing "Xyloglucan-synthesizing glycosyltransferases: some updates on their function and organization in Golgi" on Nov. 8 at 4 p.m. in Walter 145.

Zabotina is a Professor in the Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics & Molecular Biology and Director of the Interdepartmental Plant Biology graduate program at Iowa State University.

Abstract: As the abundant and major hemicellulose in plant cell walls, Xyloglucan directly affects the cell wall mechanical strength, cell expansion, and ability to respond to environmental stresses. During xyloglucan biosynthesis, glucan syntheses (CSLC) synthesize glucan backbone, xylosyltransferases (XXTs) are responsible for adding the xylose residues to the glucan backbone, galactosyltransferases (MUR3 and XLT2) and fucosyltransferase (FUT1) finish the complete molecular structure. Our work demonstrated that these proteins form heterocomplexes in Golgi and must coordinate their actions. The stability of proteins can impact the protein-protein interactions and their co-existence in the same multiprotein complexes, thus providing information about potential compositional arrangements of such complexes. Additional information about the compositional organization of multiprotein complexes can also be deducted from the elucidation of their distribution along Golgi stacks. In my presentation, I will present the most recent results from the work directed to answer these questions.