Moshe Gordon, a Biochemistry graduate student in Dr. Joseph Falke's lab has been awarded the SRAA Outstanding Poster Award at the 2020 Biophysical Society Annual Conference in San Diego, California. Moshe presented his poster, titled "Single-Molecule Diffusion Studies of Membrane-bound PDK1-PKC Heterodimers Reveal a Monomee-Dimer Equilibrium with Regulatory Significance," during a graduate student competition and was one of two students selected from the Membrane Structure and Function category.
The Falke lab studies the leading-edge membrane of chemotaxing white blood cells. This highly specialized membrane possesses a sophisticated sensory pathway that enables white blood cells to follow chemical trails to sites of infection, inflammation, and tissue damage. The pathway includes multiple, membrane-bound master kinases responsible for integrating receptor and second messenger signals, ultimately yielding a signal output that controls the direction and speed of cell movement. In this project the lab measures the 2D diffusion, enzyme activities, and protein-protein interactions of single, membrane-bound kinase molecules via single molecule Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence microscopy (smTIRFM). In particular, Moshe's project focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which essential receptor-kinase and kinase-kinase interactions activate and inhibit the sensory pathway, respectively.