| Popis: |
The adaptor protein p130Cas (CAS, BCAR1) represents a nodal signaling platform for integrin and growth factor receptor signaling, and influences normal development and tissue homeostasis. Its altered expression drives many pathological conditions including tumor growth, metastasis and drug resistance in many cancer types. How p130Cas contributes to many of these pathologies is still poorly understood. Therefore, the overall aim of my PhD work was to provide new insights to p130Cas signaling and its regulation. The SH3 domain is indispensable for p130Cas signaling, but the ligand binding characteristics of the p130Cas SH3 domain, and the structural determinants of its regulation were not well understood. To be able to study various aspects of p130Cas signaling we identified an atypical binding motif in p130Cas SH3 domain by establishing collaborations with Dr Veverka (Structural biology) and Dr Lepšík (Computational biochemistry; Academy of Sciences, CZ) which gave new insight into this binding interface. Through these collaborations I generated chimeras of p130Cas SH3 domain with its ligands for structural NMR analysis and learned how to visualize and analyze structures. Furthermore, my work expanded our knowledge of p130Cas SH3 ligand binding regulation and led to a novel model of Src-p130Cas- FAK... |
