Kavli Research & Enterprise Discussions (K.R.E.D)
Kavli Research & Enterprise Discussions (K.R.E.D)
Our Kavli Research and Enterprise Discussion (K.R.E.D.) will be presented by
Professor Daniel L. Minor, Jr, University of California San Francisco.
Date: 19 June 2025
Time: 16:30
Venue: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building - Seminar Room 1 (20-026)
This is an event for University staff only.
Professor Daniel L. Minor, Jr’s talk is entitled
“Electrosome assembly: A first structural view of ion channel biogenesis”
His abstract and biography are below
Abstract:
Ion channels are multiprotein transmembrane complexes (Electrosomes) that drive the spark of life by creating the electrical signals required to move, sense our surroundings, and think. Voltage-gated ion channels (VGICs) are the largest ion channel class and comprise multiple structural units whose assembly is required for function. Despite decades of study and having exemplar structures from essentially every VGIC class, there is scant structural understanding of how VGIC subunits assemble and whether chaperone proteins are required. High-voltage activated calcium channels (CaVs) are paradigmatic multi subunit VGICs whose function and trafficking is powerfully shaped by interactions between pore forming CaV1 or CaV2 CaV𝛂1 and auxiliary CaVβ, and CaV𝛂2𝝳 subunits. We recently determined cryo electronmicroscopy structures of human brain and cardiac CaV1.2 bound with CaVβ3 to a chaperone, the endoplasmic reticulum membrane protein complex (EMC), and of the fully assembled CaV1.2/CaVβ3/CaV𝛂2𝝳-1 channel. These structures provide the first view of an EMC:client complex and partially assembled VGIC. Structural and functional analysis indicates that the EMC acts as a holdase that facilitates channel assembly. Our findings set a molecular framework having broad implications for understanding VGIC biogenesis, drug action, and the effects of disease-causing mutations.
Biography:
Daniel Minor received a B.A. in Biophysics and Biochemistry, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Chemistry in 1996 for biophysical studies of protein folding. Following postdoctoral studies on ion channel structure and function at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of California San Francisco, he became a faculty member at the . He is currently a professor in the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute and Departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and a Faculty Scientist at the Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory. His laboratory focuses on the structure, chemical biology, and biogenesis of ion channels and exploring the origins of toxin resistance mechanisms. He is a fellow of the Biophysical Society and recipient of the Kenneth S. Cole Award in membrane biophysics.
