Context matters – order and disorder in cellular signalling

Title:  Context matters – order and disorder in cellular signalling 

Speaker:  Prof Birthe Kragelund of the University of Copenhagen

Abstract:  In biology, most proteins exist in combinations of structural order and disorder, which has fostered a divide-and-conquer approach for their characterizations. However, emerging views point towards an important functional interplay between order and disorder, and from several examples it has now been shown that disorder may continue to exist in protein complexes and be of functional relevance. Only by studying intact proteins and context, we may understand function at its depth. From our studies on different protein systems involved in cellular signaling, including cytokine receptors and transcription factors where order and disorder co-exist and where disorder remain in complexes, I will highlight the role of context for disorder-based interactions and focus on important functional outcomes of remaining disorder in protein complexes.

BIOGRAPHY: Birthe B. Kragelund is professor in biophysics and NMR spectroscopy at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark, and heads the Novo Nordisk Foundation center REPIN – rethinking protein interactions – focusing on interactions of intrinsically disordered proteins. She is instigator and vice chair of the integrative structural biology cluster (ISBUC) at UCPH and have led several interdisciplinary collaborative consortia. Kragelund earned her PhD at the legendary Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, and at the Southern University of Denmark, with research also at the Dobson laboratory in Oxford, UK. She did a post doc at the Chemical Center at Lund University, Sweden, after which she moved to UCPH. Dr. Kragelund’s research is focused on how structural disorder impacts biology, and she has made seminal contributions to the field, including deciphering disorder in membrane proteins.