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Overview
Tamás Balla's Section on Molecular Signal Transduction investigates the role of phosphoinositide-derived messengers in mediating the actions of hormones, growth factors, and neurotransmitters in mammalian cells, and studies focus on the cellular functions of phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4K) enzymes that regulate the first committed step in phosphoinositide synthesis. Over the last year, the Section developed a new method for rapidly eliminating PtdIns4P selectively from Golgi membranes and showed that exit of various cargoes from the Golgi was blocked once PtdIns4P was removed. Collaborative studies visualized, for the first time, the contact zones between the mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum and the local calcium ion concentration in these microdomains. The Section was also involved in studies that showed PI4K type-IIIbeta to be critical for the replication of small RNA viruses such as polio and coxsackievirus, opening new possibilities to fight these viral infections