Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling

Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling

Poster Abstracts

8-POS Board 4 Formation of Cytoophidia Studied by Superresolution Microscopy Jian Chang 1 , Ömür Y. Tastan 2 , Ji-Long Liu 2,3 , Yan-Wen Tan 1 . 1 Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 2 University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 3 ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China.

CTP synthase (CtpS) is an essential metabolic enzyme. It catalyses CTP production from UTP, ATP, glutamine and acts as an attractive target for various cancer and parasitic diseases in drug development. Recently, CtpS has been observed to polymerize into “Cytoophidia” in different organisms. Cytoophidia is an interesting evolutionarily-conserved filamentous structure and plays an essential role in regulation of enzymatic activity. However, current knowledge of cytoophidia are coming from conventional methods and a lot are still unknown, especially the mechanism of cytoophidia polymerization. We use fluorescence superresolution microscopy to observe the filaments. Our results indicate that CtpS from Drosophila can assemble into cytoophidia in vitro without participation of other proteins and these filaments exhibit interesting twisting pattern. Whether cytoophidia can co-ploymerize with other components from Drosophila is also studied.

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