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In its 88-year story, the mission of our institute has been to carry out excellence research in fundamental and applied physical chemistry, contributing to the scientific training of several generations of researchers at the highest level. Our vision is to be an international reference in multidisciplinary research focused on the resolution of the present challenges of our society in the fields of health, biotechnology, new materials, and environment.

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Organization by compartmentalization is a general property of natural systems that efficiently facilitates and orchestrates biological events in space and time. In the last decade, compartmentalization of the plasma membrane

of living cells has emerged as a dominant feature present at different spatiotemporal scales and regulating key cell functions. The advent of super-resolution microscopy and single molecule dynamic approaches has allowed the study of the cell membrane with unprecedented levels of details. From these studies it is becoming clear that receptor nanoclustering prior to ligand presentation constitutes a functional working unit of mammalian cells, including those of the immune system. 

In this talk, I will first describe the working principle of these advanced optical techniques and will then focus on recent studies of the membrane protein CD1d, a non-classical MHC protein, involved in the presentation of lipid antigens to invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT). Our results indicate that regulation of CD1d nanoclustering through the actin cytoskeleton constitutes a novel mechanism to fine-tune peripheral iNKT cell autoreactivity. Since NKT cells can rapidly respond to the presence of tumour cells and participate in anti-tumour immune responses, understanding how the immune reactivity of NKT cells is shaped can contribute to the rational use of these cells in cancer immunotherapies.

SEMINAR’S DATE, TIME AND PLACE: 13 December 2017, 12:00. Assembly Hall

SPEAKER: María García-Parajo

ABSTRACT