Dr. Madhusudan Dey, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at UW-Milwaukee, will present a talk about his research, entitled ‘Unfolded Protein Response (UPR): Sensing and Signaling’. Learn more about Dr. Dey’s work here.

Secretary proteins fold and mature inside the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Cellular stresses that cause accumulation of misfolded proteins within the ER trigger a network of intracellular signaling pathways collectively known as the unfolded protein response (UPR). The UPR, according to the current model, is sensed and signaled by three ER-resident proteins IRE1, PERK and ATF6. Each of these sensors contains a lumenal domain that senses ER stress and a cytoplasmic domain that transmits the stress signal to the transcriptional and translational machineries to alter the gene expression, thus alleviating the stress signal. Dr. Dey’s lab focuses on understanding the detailed molecular mechanisms of the UPR, which include a balanced synthesis, fold, distribution and degradation of secretary proteins. They identified new components of the UPR in the budding yeast, including protein kinases Kin2 (a human ortholog microtubule affinity regulated kinase, MARK), Pkh1 (a human ortholog of 3-phosphoinositide–dependent protein kinase 1, PDK1) and Vps34 (a human ortholog of a class III phosphoinositide 3-kinase). In this colloquium talk, Dr. Dey will discuss his research processes, outcomes and progresses.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM via Microsoft Teams, preceded by an informal Q&A from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.