APR 28 - APR 29 2018 AT INTERCONTINENTAL DOHA


Signaling at Membrane Contact Sites

ADVANCING DISCOVERY IN CELL SIGNALING

Richard Lewis, PhD

Richard Lewis

Professor of Molecular & Cell physiology
Molecular & Cellular Physiology
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA

Richard Lewis is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Lewis received his PhD at Caltech in the lab of James Hudspeth, where he determined the role of Ca2+ and K+ channels in generating electrical resonance tuning in vestibular hair cells. Inspired by unusual roles of ion channels, he joined Michael Cahalan’s lab at UC Irvine as a postdoc, where he discovered in T cells the Ca2+ current that later became known as the Ca2+ release-activated Ca2+ (CRAC) current. Since that time, his own lab has focused on mechanisms of calcium signal generation in lymphocytes by CRAC channels, Ca2+ pumps, and mitochondria; effects of Ca2+ oscillations on gene expression and cell motility in developing T cells; and the role of CRAC channels in driving actin dynamics at the immune synapse. Since the discovery of STIM and Orai proteins, his lab has pursued the molecular mechanisms of CRAC channel regulation, including the molecular choreography of STIM1 and Orai1 and the diffusion trap that underlies their co-localization, the ultrastructural identification of ER-plasma membrane junctions where STIM1 and Orai1 interact, and the stoichiometric basis for Orai1 activation by STIM1 binding.