Understanding the organisational principles of endosomal trafficking
A living cell is an active and dynamic system, where all the non-living constituents of a cell organise themselves through a complex set of interactions.
There are millions of interactions going on between tens of thousands of components. One central component of cellular life is vesicular trafficking on the cytoskeleton networks inside the cells. Quite analogous to how a city is organised (with general public transport systems consisting of buses, light rails, and trains, specific highways for long-distance transport, cars, motorbikes etcetera), the inside of the cells have self-assembled, polymerised proteins building up the tracks, membrane vesicles that carry specific cargoes building up the transport carriers, and the motor proteins that generate the force to pull the membrane vesicles to move along the tracks building up the transport system.
The Arumugam Group aims to understand the organisational principles of this transport system, as well as understand their role in orchestrating fundamental processes governing multicellular life, such as patterning during development.
