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Single-Cell Biophysics: Measurement, Modulation, and Modeling
Poster Abstracts
102
8-POS
Board 4
Formation of Cytoophidia Studied by Superresolution Microscopy
Jian Chang
1
, Ömür Y. Tastan
2
, Ji-Long Liu
2,3
, Yan-Wen Tan
1
.
1
Fudan University, Shanghai, China,
2
University of Oxford, Oxford, United
Kingdom,
3
ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China.
CTP synthase (CtpS) is an essential metabolic enzyme. It catalyses CTP production from UTP,
ATP, glutamine and acts as an attractive target for various cancer and parasitic diseases in drug
development. Recently, CtpS has been observed to polymerize into “Cytoophidia” in different
organisms. Cytoophidia is an interesting evolutionarily-conserved filamentous structure and
plays an essential role in regulation of enzymatic activity. However, current knowledge of
cytoophidia are coming from conventional methods and a lot are still unknown, especially the
mechanism of cytoophidia polymerization. We use fluorescence superresolution microscopy to
observe the filaments. Our results indicate that CtpS from Drosophila can assemble into
cytoophidia in vitro without participation of other proteins and these filaments exhibit interesting
twisting pattern. Whether cytoophidia can co-ploymerize with other components from
Drosophila is also studied.