Abstract

High Content Analysis Strategies for Academic Research

Sebastian Munck, Bio Imaging Core Leader, KU Leuven

Crucial to understanding cell signaling is unraveling how the key players, proteins, and lipids and organelles are functioning. To this aim high content analysis is employed for quantitative analysis in an academic research setting. I will highlight two recent success stories of strategies to analyze organelles such as cilia and giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Cilia are microtubule-based cellular protrusions functioning as cellular antennas. Cilia are often associated with a break on cell proliferation. Thus, cilia are of specific interest as the development of cancer is often accompanied by a loss of the primary cilium. Hence, the identification of drugs for the restoration of the primary cilium in cancer cells may represent a novel promising approach to attenuate tumor growth. In addition, I will be discussing how to screen proteins that deform membranes with the aim to identify membrane-associated machines that target synaptic constituents for degradation. Specifically, I will highlight strategies how the chaperone Hsc70-4 deforms membranes to promote synaptic protein turnover by endosomal microautophagy using GUVs.