Autophagy, or self-eating, is a term coined by Nobel Prize winner Christian de Duve in the 1960s as an extension of his discovery of the membrane bound organelle called lysosome. He and his colleagues found that damaged or redundant intracellular material is recycled in lysosomes to yield basic building blocks of a cell for re-use. Although autophagy has been observed in many cell types, especially in times of starvation, how it is orchestrated molecularly has eluded researchers for many years. The mystery was solved through the work of this year’s Nobel Prize winner, Yoshinori Ohsumi. Using the budding yeast as a model, Ohsumi and colleagues discovered 15 conserved genes that are required for autophagy in a genetic screen. Their subsequent functional studies in yeast and mammalian cells provided a detailed molecular framework of autophagy. It is now recognized that autophagy is an essential process for human health and disease: dysregulation of autophagy has implications in bacterial infection and neurodegeneration.
About the speaker
Prof Ho Yi Mak received his BA in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge and PhD in Molecular Pathology from the University College London for work done at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Central Laboratories. He is currently an Associate Professor of Life Science at HKUST.
Prof Mak’s research group is broadly interested in how body fat level is maintained in animals and how it can be disrupted through genetic and dietary perturbations. They use genetic, biochemical and imaging approaches to study how fat is stored and mobilized in nematodes and mammalian cells.
For attendees’ attention
The lecture is free and open to all. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
Light refreshments will be served from 4:30 to 5:00 pm.
