[SMaLS] Physical Bioenergetics of oocytes

Speaker: Peter J. Foster, Ph.D. (he, him, his) | Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy & Quantitative and Computational Biology | University of Southern California

Title: Physical Bioenergetics of oocytes

Abstract: Metabolic energy fluxes provide the chemical energy required to drive active cellular machines, yet the mechanisms that set metabolic energy fluxes are not fully understood.  Here, we investigate glycolytic energy flux using meiotic oocytes of the bat star Patiria miniata as a model system. We probe the internal metabolism of individual cells using a fluorescent biosensor reporting on a key glycolytic intermediate, whose concentration correlates with the rate of glycolytic flux in diverse systems. Surprisingly, we find that intracellular spatial gradients of this glycolytic intermediate develop over the course of meiosis, with the highest signal coming from the cell’s periphery, suggesting a spatially varying glycolytic rate. We show these spatial gradients are actin dependent, as either depolymerizing or stabilizing actin abolishes the gradients. Taken together, these results demonstrate a spatial component to metabolism within single cells driven by feedback between cellular machines and the metabolic processes which power them.