Loren Hough, Ph.D.
Abstract
I’ll be telling two distinct, but related, stories about cellular roles of disordered or dynamics structures. The first will be focusing our computational and experimental efforts to probe the role of coiled-coil domains in phase separation. We have shown that coiled-coil interactions can readily promote phase separation in synthetic systems, and are working to determine how the sequence of coiled-coil proteins determines their condensation. The second focus will be on tubulin CTTs as pH sensors for regulating microtubule function. We find that glutamate residues in CTTs exhibit a robust upshift in pKa, that the sequential context of glutamate residues creates hot spots for protonation, and hydrogen bonding between side chains stabilizes interactions that alter the conformation of the CTT. We find that pH regulates the binding of Cin8 in a CTT dependent manner, demonstrating that CTT pH response has the potential to play an important role in microtubule function, and so more generally that acidic clusters are important mediators of cellular pH responses.
When: October 16, 2026
Where: North Classroom 1608
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00pm