Biological Sciences Colloquium: Dr. Dominique Alfandari

Dr. Dominique Alfandari, professor of developmental biology at UMASS Amherst, will present a talk about his work entitled “ADAMs in Motion: A Cellular Odyssey from Surface to Nucleus.”

The abstract is as follows:

Cranial neural crest (CNC) cells are key stem cells that contribute to most of the facial structures in vertebrates. ADAM (A Disintegrin And Metalloprotease) proteins are essential for the induction and migration of the CNC. We have shown that Adam13 associates with the transcription factor Arid3a to regulate gene expression. Here we show that Adam13 modulates Histone modifications in the CNC. We show that Arid3a binding to the tfap2a promoter depends on the presence of Adam13. This association promotes the expression of one tfap2a variant expressed in the CNC that uniquely activates the expression of genes critical for CNC migration. We show that both Adam13 and human ADAM9 associate with proteins involved in histone modification and RNA splicing, a function critically affected by the loss of Adam13. We propose that ADAMs may act as extracellular sensors to modulate chromatin availability, leading to changes in gene expression and splicing.

The presentation will begin at 3:00 PM in Lapham Hall N101, preceded by an informal reception from 2:45 – 3:00PM.