Christopher Obara, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Departments of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry
University of California, San Diego
Faculty Host: Andrew McCulloch, Ph.D.
Seminar Information
Membrane-enclosed organelles are the hallmark of eukaryotic systems, forming physically distinct compartments where biochemically incompatible reactions can occur simultaneously. The delineating membranes are not passive boundaries, however, instead forming incredibly complex nanoscale landscapes riddled with numerous sites where specific biochemical reactions occur and are regulated by poorly understood nanoscale communication. Despite the crucial central role of these structures in nearly every biological process in eukaryotes, direct observation of their unperturbed ultrastructure and composition has proven largely elusive. Technical limitations in sample preparation, reagent availability, and the spatiotemporal limitations of imaging approaches have left this space largely unexplored. Emerging technologies in cryogenics, electron microscopy, and fluorescence imaging promise to bridge this gap in the near future. I will present work derived from three pipelines that correlate information across numerous emerging technologies for understanding the ultrastructure, nanoscale composition, and dynamic properties of organelle membranes. We use these approaches to uncouple fundamental biological aspects of protein sorting, quality control and degradation, interorganelle communication, and cellular metabolic regulation.
Christopher Obara is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology, Chemistry & Biochemistry here at UC San Diego, where he runs a laboratory studying how single proteins experiencing the laws of physics collectively give rise to a complex, self-maintaining cellular systems. He received his bachelor’s degrees in physics and entomology at the University of Florida, where he worked on several diverse problems including hive mind theory in ants and termites, symbiotic viruses in wasps, and quantum tunneling in solar panels. He married his diverse interests in physics and biology during his PhD at the NIH, where he studied how vaccines and other immune responses affect virus infection using statistical physics approaches. His postdoctoral work with Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz at HHMI Janelia Research Campus was broadly focused on the development and application of advanced imaging approaches to characterize the biophysical processes that give rise to living systems, with a particular focus on cellular membranes. He remains interested in the way living systems evolved to use basic macromolecules like proteins, lipids, and sugars to solve the complex energetic problems required to mediate life, and he is looking forward to interfacing with the talented field of scientists at UCSD to train the next generation of scientists working on these problems.