From: Anantharaman, Vivek (NIH/NLM/NCBI)
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 10:21 PM
To: ncbi-seminar@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Subject: CBB Seminar: Tuesday November 2nd, 2PM

Time: 2PM, Tuesday November 2nd, 2004
Location: NCBI Library, B2 floor, Building 38A
Speaker: Vivek Anantharaman, NCBI
Title: Emergence of eukaryotic cell structure and Function.


In the course of the past year, the publicly available microbial genome
sequences crossed the hundred mark, and significant progress was also seen
in sequencing of diverse eukaryotic genomes, such as Guillardia theta,
Leishmania major, Giardia lamblia, Cryptosporidium parvum, Neurospora
crassa, Plasmodium and Dictyostelium discoideum. There have also been
important reports on the biochemical and structural characterization of
various protein domains from both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. In this talk I
will discuss the implications of these recent developments in relation to
the evolution and emergence of eukaryotic cell structure and function. I
will give a brief overlook of the evolution of some eukaryotic systems.
First, the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus will be discussed, focusing
on selected components of nuclear envelope (NE) and nuclear pore complex
(NPC). Second, novel RNA binding domains which throw light on the emergence
of eukaryote-specific systems of RNA metabolism, namely capping and splicing
will be discussed. Lastly, the specific and general parallels in the
architectures and mechanisms of bacterial and eukaryotic signaling pathways,
which we uncovered through comparative genomic analysis, will be presented.
These observations are discussed in terms of the hypothesis that various
eukaryotic systems might have actually emerged through repeated seeding by
regulatory modules from prokaryotes.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Vivek Anantharaman, PhD
National Center for Biotechnology Information, 
National Library of Medicine, 
National Institutes of Health,
Bldg. 38A, Rm. N507A, 
8600 Rockville pike, 
Bethesda, MD 20894, USA
Phone: (301)443-1194
Email: ananthar@mail.nih.gov