Aaron Turkewitz, PhD

Primary:

Associate Professor, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology

Secondary:

Committees on Genetics, Cell Physiology, Microbiology,
Cancer Research Center and The College

Education:

AB   Biochemistry, Harvard University

PhD  Biochemistry/Molecular Biology,
         Harvard University

 
Phone: (773) 702-4374
E-Mail: apturkew@midway.uchicago.edu
Webpage: http://mgcb.bsd.uchicago.edu/index3.html?content=faculty/aTurkewitz/index.html
Address: Room 611A CLSC; 920 E. 58th St.; Chicago, IL 60637

Research Summary

Regulation of protein traffic; exocytosis and endocytosis in protists; evolution.
Our laboratory studies membrane traffic in a somewhat unusual model system, the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. Ciliates emerged as an early branch during eukaryotic evolution, and are far more distantly related to humans, for example, than are most organisms being studied by cell biologists. Our interest in these cells stems from the fact that ciliates are unicellular and offer a host of experimental advantages, but at the same time are highly complex and maintain many cellular features that are usually associated with animal cells. In particular, ciliates have a prominent pathway for regulated secretion of polypeptides via dense core granules. Such granules arise by mechanisms that are poorly understood in the mammalian cells in which they have classically been studied. We use a combination of biochemical and genetic approaches, taking advantage of the ability to derive viable Tetrahymena mutants with defects in granule function. Our second major interest is in the complementary process, endocytosis, by which membrane is taken up from the cell surface. Ciliates also appear to maintain endocytic structures that are remarkably similar to those in animal cells, yet differences at the molecular level, first suggested by analysis of the recently completed (2004) Tetrahymena genome, are turning out to be informative both for mechanistic and evolutionary studies.

Some Selected Papers


Elde NC, Morgan G, Winey M, Sperling L, Turkewitz AP (2005) Elucidation of Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis in Tetrahymena Reveals an Evolutionarily Convergent Recruitment of Dynamin. PLoS Genet 1(5) e52

Cowan AT, Bowman GR, Edwards KF, Emerson JJ, Turkewitz AP. Genetic, Genomic, and Functional Analysis of the Granule Lattice Proteins in Tetrahymena Secretory Granules. Mol Biol Cell. 2005 Sep;16(9):4046-60.  PubMed Citation

Bowman GR, Elde NC, Morgan G, Winey M, Turkewitz AP. Core formation and the acquisition of fusion competence are linked during secretory granule maturation in Tetrahymena. Traffic. 2005 Apr;6(4):303-23.  PubMed Citation

Bowman GR, Smith DG, Michael Siu KW, Pearlman RE, Turkewitz AP. Genomic and Proteomic Evidence for a Second Family of Dense Core Granule Cargo Proteins in Tetrahymena thermophila. J Eukaryot Microbiol. 2005 Jul-Aug;52(4):291-7.

A. P. Turkewitz. Out with a bang! Tetrahymena as a model system to study secretory granule biogenesis. Traffic. 2004 Feb;5(2):63-8. Review. PubMed Citation

Bradshaw, N. R., Chilcoat, N. D., Verbsky, J. W. and Turkewitz, A. P. (2003). Proprotein processing within secretory dense core granules of Tetrahymena thermophila.  J Biol Chem 278: 4087-95. PubMed Citation

Turkewitz, A. P., Orias, E. and Kapler, G. (2002). Functional genomics: the coming of age for Tetrahymena thermophila.  Trends Genet 18: 35-40. PubMed Citation

Chilcoat, N. D., Elde, N. C. and Turkewitz, A. P. (2001).  An antisense approach to phenotype-based gene cloning in Tetrahymena.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 98: 8709-13. PubMed Citation





 

Updated 10/18/05.