The seminars are followed by the PhD defense by Samuel Hjort-Jensen, where Gisela Brändén and Jette Sandholm Kastrup are examiners.

Download seminar announcement here

From 11:00 – 11:30               
Seminar by Gisela Brändén
Department of Chemistry & Molecular Biology
University of Gothenburg

XFEL- and synchrotron-based serial crystallography studies of the membrane-bound proton pump cytochrome c oxidase

Serial crystallography is a novel method within macromolecular crystallography that allows determination of protein structures at room temperature and enables time-resolved studies of protein dynamics. We use this method to study the membrane-bound respiratory protein cytochrome c oxidase, with the hope of being able to describe the mechanistic details of proton pumping. I will present data from experiments at the Japanese XFEL SACLA and MAX IV Laboratories in Lund.

From 11:30 – 12:00               
Seminar by Jette Sandholm Kastrup
Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Positive allosteric modulation of AMPA and kainate receptors

Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) mediate fast excitatory neurotransmission in the central nervous system. The iGluRs are involved in learning and memory, but also in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. The iGluRs have been divided into four subfamilies: AMPA, kainate, NMDA and delta receptors. We study positive allosteric modulation of AMPA and kainate receptors by small molecule ligands. Whereas X-ray structures of AMPA receptors with positive allosteric modulators have been known since 2002, we only recently published structures with a kainate receptor. I will discuss our work on a specific class of positive allosteric modulators named BPAMs.

Host:
Professor Poul Nissen,

DANDRITE – the Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience

Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University