QLS Seminar - TODAY Wed. 25 June at 11h00 - "Decoding thermosensation and associated response mechanisms in Caenorhabditis elegans" by Rati Sharma (Dept. of Chemistry, IISER Bhopal, India)

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

Dear All,

Today, Wednesday, 25 June at 11:00 CET, Dr. Rati Sharma (Dept. of 
Chemistry, IISER Bhopal, India) will give a seminar titled:

*"**Decoding thermosensation and associated response mechanisms in 
/Caenorhabditis elegans/**"

*_Abstract:

_All living organisms need to respond to changing environmental signals 
for their survival. Therefore, organisms have developed elaborate 
intracellular and intercellular signaling mechanisms to respond 
appropriately to environmental changes [1, 2]. In this talk, I will 
focus on our study of signal-response mechanisms associated with sensing 
temperature changes using the roundworm, /C. elegans/, as a model 
system. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss a theoretical 
model that helps in understanding how temperature fluctuations are 
relayed across the thermosensory AFD neuron through the cGMP pathway 
leading to changes in Calcium response dynamics [3]. In the second part 
of my talk, I will discuss our experimental study where we look into how 
the heat shock response dynamics is affected by the AFD neuron specific 
receptor guanylate cyclases (rGCs). Through behavioral assays and 
molecular biology studies at the mRNA and protein levels, we find that 
the rGCs in the neuron play a very important role in upregulating the 
small heat shock proteins present in the other cells during high 
temperature (>30 deg celcius) conditions [4].

[1] Sushmita Pal and Rati Sharma, Transcription factors and chaperone 
proteins play a role in launching a faster response to heat stress and 
aggregation, Comp. Biol. and Chem. 93, 107534 (2021)
[2] Ayush Ranawade, Rati Sharma and Erel Levine, Lessons Learned from 
Two Decades of Modeling the Heat-Shock Response, Biomolecules 12, 1645 
(2022)
[3] Abhilasha Batra and Rati Sharma, Neuronal Decoding of Temperature 
Signals in Caenorhabditis elegans /Under review /Biorxiv: doi: 
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.27.634994
[4] Abhilasha Batra and Rati Sharma, Guanylyl cyclase signaling in AFD 
neurons regulates systemic stress resilience in C. elegans, /Under review /*

The seminar will take place in the _Common area, Old SISSA building, 
second floor - Via Beirut, 2__
_
* You are all most welcome to attend!

Best regards,
Erica

Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail:qls at ictp.it