Keynote Speakers

Kang Shen, Ph.D.

E-mail : kangshen (at) stanford.edu

Job title :
Professor, Department of Biology, Department of Pathology, Stanford University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Laboratory home page : http://web.stanford.edu/group/shenlab/cgi-bin/shenlab/

Keynote Lecture

How to send a protein to axon or dendrite

The cardinal feature of neuronal polarization is the establishment and maintenance of axons and dendrites. How axonal and dendritic proteins are sorted and targeted to different compartments is poorly understood. Here, we identified distinct di-leucine motifs that are necessary and sufficient to target transmembrane proteins to either the axon or the dendrite through direct interactions with the clathrin-associated adaptor protein complexes (APs) in C. elegans. Axonal targeting requires AP-3, while dendritic targeting is mediated by AP-1. The axonal di-leucine motif binds to AP-3 with higher affinity than to AP-1. Both AP-3 and AP-1 are localized at the Golgi and endosomes in the soma. We propose that AP-3 and AP-1 directly select transmembrane proteins and target them to axon and dendrite, respectively, by sorting them into distinct vesicle pools.