The Rab Convertor - Monensin sensitive 1

(A collaboration with Dr. Anuradha Ratnaparkhi's laboratory at ARI, Pune)

The Mon1:CcZ complex acts as a GEF in the lysosomal endocytic pathway. Absence of mon1 function leads to a backup of endosomal traffic at the Rab5 marked sorting endosome, with a concomitant decrease in Rab7 marked late endosomes. This function of Mon1 is conserved in animals, yeast onwards. Genetic characterization of mon1 hypomorphic mutants, generated and characterized in Anurdaha's laboratory have led us to uncover interesting roles for Mon1 in organisms. These include roles in neuronal development, specifically during the formation of larval dendritic arbors (Harish et. al., 2019), a nodal role in Insulin signaling (Dhiman et. al., 2019), from the brain to the ovary and last but not the least a trans-synaptic role in the neuromuscular junction - regulating signaling of Glutamate receptors in the muscle (Deivasigamani et.al., 2015), from the neuron.