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BUSTOS PLONKA, Florentyna

CONICET PhD Fellow
Director: Santiago Quiroga
E-mail jflorbustos@gmail.com

PhD Thesis Topic

Regulation of exocytosis of precursor plasmalemma vesicles in developing neurons: their relationship with the initial elongation of axons and the establishment of neuronal polarity
The subject of this project is based on the study of the regulation of the addition of new membrane into the axonal growth cone and biochemical and functional identification of the proteins involved in the exocytosis required for the initial axonal growth in relation to the establishment of the neuronal polarity.
In more recent experiments, it was determined that the complex TC10-exo70 (initiator of membrane recruitment of the exocyst complex in non-neuronal cells) when it is activated by IGF-1 is essential for the establishment of neuronal polarity (Dupraz et al. 2009 ). In this context, it was interesting that the TC10-exo70 complex is essential for polarized insertion of receptors of IGF-1 in a single neurite of a neuron that still don´t exhibit an axon (Dupraz et al., 2009).
Specifically we propose the biochemical and functional identification of components in exocyst complex in developing neurons. The exocyst complex is an important candidate for the regulation of fusion of vesicle in polarized cells, of which the total composition is still unknown in neurons. The purpose of this research is to identify which proteins of the exocyst complex are expressed in developing neurons and determine their importance in the regulation of the addition of new membrane in establishing neuronal polarity.