Research Overview
Control of intracellular transport by the Klarsicht protein
Distribution of Klar (green) and nuclei (blue) in ovaries and embryos. In early embryos (left), Klar is associated with lipid droplets. In ovaries (right), Klar is highly enriched on the nuclear envelope in nurse cells and oocytes (see Guo et al., 2005).
Klarsicht is an important regulator of multiple transport processes (discussed in Kim et al., 2013). For example, Klar controls the migration of nuclei in photoreceptors, positioning of muscle nuclei, membrane growth in salivary glands, microtubule stability in cultured cells, and asymmetric chromosome segregation in testis stem cells. Although Klar clearly affects microtubules and microtubule motors, it is largely unclear how it acts mechanistically. We address the question how Klar functions using two transport processes: motion of lipid droplets in early embryos (Welte et al., 1998, Guo et al., 2005, Yu et al., 2011) and RNA localization during oogenesis (unpublished). We have proposed that Klar regulates a subset of the transport processes driven by cytoplasmic dynein/kinesin-1, and thus allows the cell to employ these general motors in a cargo-specific manner Guo et al., 2005.
Ongoing work:
- Genetic and molecular dissection of Klar
- Klar’s role in lipid-droplet motion
- Klar and RNA localization in oocytes
For other projects in the laboratory, please check out the links below: