Dr. Forest White of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Forest White of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will present

"Functional Proteomics for Mechanistic and Translational Insight

on January 30, 2019 at 4:10pm in Neville Hall, Room 3

Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs) are critical for normal human physiology, but can be oncogenic when highly expressed or mutated in a wide array of human cancers.  To define the critical components in these networks, we have developed mass spectrometry based methods enabling the absolute quantification of tyrosine phosphorylation sites in RTK signaling networks at high temporal resolution following stimulation with different ligands or inhibitors, in vitro and in vivo.  Quantitative phosphorylation data generated in this analysis provides insight into the occupancy of multiple tyrosine phosphorylation sites on the receptor, highlights mechanisms of differential regulation in response to different ligands, and highlights resistance mechanisms to selected inhibitors.  To complement these signaling assays, we have recently developed an approach enabling the quantification of protein synthesis rates at multiple time points following cell stimulation.  Application of this new method to the EGFR network provides new biological insight into the speed and regulation of protein translation rates.