Łukasiewicz – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development invites you to a lecture by Prof. Jakub Włodarczyk from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
The lecture entitled “The molecular fingerprint of stress resilience” will take place on Thursday, 15 June 2023, from 2:00–3:00 PM, at the premises of Łukasiewicz – PORT.
Stress resilience is the ability of neuronal networks to maintain their function despite exposure to stress. In the study conducted by Prof. Jakub Włodarczyk and his team, they investigated whether stress resilience is an actively developed, dynamic process. To assess different behavioral phenotypes that emerged after the induction of chronic unpredictable stress, the researchers quantitatively characterized the structural and functional plasticity of excitatory synapses in the hippocampus using a combination of proteomic, electrophysiological, and imaging methods. The results indicate that stress resilience is a dynamic and multifactorial process, manifested by structural, functional, and molecular changes in synapses. Prof. Włodarczyk’s team revealed that chronic stress affects palmitoylation, with profiles differing between stress-resilient and stress-susceptible animals. They also observed that stress resilience is associated with structural plasticity of the postsynaptic compartments of synapses. Importantly, the professor and his team identified a neuronal pathway that promotes the observed resilience.
Jakub Włodarczyk is a professor at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Warsaw (Poland) in 2006. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen, Germany). Since 2012, he has led the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at the Nencki Institute. In 2020, he was awarded the title of Professor of Natural Sciences. His main research interests include stress resilience and aberrant synaptic plasticity underlying stress-related disorders. He studies structural and functional synaptic modifications regulated by post-translational modifications. He develops and applies innovative imaging-based techniques and mass spectrometry methods to assess the reorganization of activity patterns accompanied by local volumetric and molecular changes in synapses.
The lecture can be attended on site at Łukasiewicz – PORT (147 Stabłowicka Street, Wrocław) or online (live stream on the MS Teams platform.
The lecture will be delivered in English.
The meeting is held as part of the SAME-NeuroID project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme.
