Our lab locates at School of Biological Science (SBS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
We are interested in mechanisms of how diverse extracellular and intracellular signals regulate actin assembly underlying several important physiological and pathological processes in eukaryotic cells, via biochemical assay, advanced cell imaging, genetic approaches.
Actin filament assembly contributes to the multiple cellular pathways pleiotropically, by its dynamic assembly and disassembly upon cellular needs and specific stimuli, such as the activation of polarized cell growth or the host immune responses during defense mechanisms against pathogenic attack.
In the much crowd intracellular environment, actin-binding proteins (ABPs) precisely regulate the dynamics assembly and re-organization of actin networks, in cooperative and competitive manners. We are particularly interested in how the intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) within ABPs perceive the signals to trigger re-organization of actin assembly, by regulating the protein dynamics, protein conformation, and protein-protein interactions of ABPs. Our current research mainly focuses on actin assembly mechanism in polarized yeast growth and plant defense mechanism in Arabidopsis.
Actin cytoskeleton in budding yeast and Arabidopsis (3D structured illumination microscopy)