PME Distinguished Colloquium Series Seminar - Dr. Mia Sung

Title: Zooming in on NF-xB to understand inflammation and aging.



It is our privilege and mission to take advantage of the stable funding, a large network of colleagues, and core facilities in the NIH intramural research community, and to tackle what may be less trendy but important problems. We hope that such efforts help resolve controversies and contribute to the foundational knowledge about transcriptional regulation in the immune system and aging.

NF-κB is a stress-responsive transcription factor operating in an auto-regulatory feedback network. The signaling dynamics of NF-κB can be complex, oscillatory, and out of synchrony in individual cells. However, the true cellular rhythms of NF-κB signaling are typically missed in snapshot assays. Given the critical importance of NF-κB in human health and longevity, proper tools need to be developed to understand the functional relevance of such complex real-time dynamics of NF-κB activity in single cells. We fluorescently labeled endogenous loci of NF-κB subunits in new knock-in mouse strains to characterize spatiotemporal dynamics of NF-κB in live primary cells and tissues. With the new reporter mice, we are asking how cells utilize the biological information encoded in distinct features of signaling dynamics and translate them for the specific regulation of different target genes. For example, how do immune cells sense and respond to pathogens and age-related damage products in vivo? Using quantitative live cell microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, 2D/3D tissue imaging, and mathematical modeling, we aim to understand the language of cellular networks encoded in the spatiotemporal complexity of NF-κB signaling that has emerged in the evolution of our immune system.

Host: Prof. Savas Tay