Abstract:

Membrane proteins constitute an important class of proteins for medical, pharmaceutical and biotechnological reasons. They mediate the cell’s interaction with its environment, i.e. transmission of intra- and intercellular signals, cell adhesion and transport across membranes. Membrane proteins need to be incorporated into cellular membrane, which is known as protein translocation. Protein quality control mechanisms during this process are carried out by chaperones and proteases. I will talk about my current project aiming to understand the link between membrane protein insertion, folding, and quality control. I will also talk about the methodology of cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography with examples.

Short Biography of the Speaker:

Dr. Burak V. Kabasakal received his BSc degree in Chemical Engineering from Hacettepe University. After graduate studies in Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Hacettepe University, University of California, Davis and Imperial College London, respectively, he obtained a PhD degree in Life Sciences from Imperial College London, UK. During his PhD, he studied structural and functional relations of carbon and nitrogen fixation proteins, and he was awarded International Biochemical Society Student Scholarship (2016), European Crystallography Association (ECA) Young Scientist Award (2016), International Crystallography Association (IUCR) Young Scientist Award (2016), and Stanford University Bio-X Award (2015). He then moved to Bristol as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Bristol, Biochemistry Department for about two years. He is now a research fellow at Turkish Accelerator and Radiation Laboratory (TARLA), Ankara University within the TUBITAK 2232 International Outstanding Researchers Program. His research interests are the structure- function relationship of proteins, using electron cryo-microscopy and X-ray crystallography. He has nearly thirty protein structures published in the Protein Data Base (PDB).