Lectures and seminars One Axoneme, Many Functions: Molecular Diversity of Mammalian Motile Cilia
Welcome to a seminar with Dr Chen Sun from La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
About this talk
Motile cilia are microscopic hair-like structures that beat in coordinated waves to move fluids throughout our bodies—clearing mucus from our airways, circulating cerebrospinal fluid in our brains, and enabling sperm to swim. While these diverse functions have long been recognized, the underlying structural basis for how cilia in different tissues are specialized for their unique roles has remained unclear. In this seminar, Dr Chen Sun will present recent advances in cryo-electron tomography that reveal, for the first time, the near-complete molecular architecture of axonemes—the internal "skeleton" that drives ciliary beating—across multiple mammalian tissues. These findings challenge the traditional view of the axoneme as a uniform structure and open new avenues for understanding ciliopathies, a class of diseases affecting organs from the brain to the respiratory tract.
About the speaker
Chen Sun, Ph.D., is a structural biologist specializing in cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography. She earned her Ph.D. in Structural Biology in Dr. Wen Jiang’s laboratory at Purdue University, where she investigated high-resolution structures of viral and macromolecular assemblies. She then completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Rui Zhang’s lab, studying the molecular architecture of mammalian motile cilia.
Dr. Sun is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire’s group at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, where she solved the first structure of the human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) envelope protein and identified a panel of monoclonal antibodies targeting HERV-K Env, laying the foundation for HERV-K–directed cancer therapies. She subsequently conceptualized and leads a new research program on the structural basis of CAR T-cell immune synapses in their native cellular context, aiming to uncover mechanisms of CAR T-cell function and inform next-generation therapeutic engineering.
Selected publications
- Structural diversity of axonemes across mammalian motile cilia. Nature (2025). Miguel Ricardo Leung*, Chen Sun*, Jianwei Zeng*, Jacob R. Anderson*, Qingwei Niu, Wei Huang, Willem E. M. Noteborn, Alan Brown, Tzviya Zeev-Ben-Mordehai, and Rui Zhang. (*co-first author)
- Human endogenous retrovirus HERV-K envelope glycoprotein structures in pre- and post-fusion conformations by cryo-EM. Science Advances 11, eady8168(2025). Jeremy Shek*, Chen Sun*, Elise M. Wilson, Fatemeh Moadab, Kathryn M. Hastie, Roshan R. Rajamanickam, Patrick J. Penalosa, Stephanie S. Harkins, Diptiben Parekh, Chitra Hariharan, Dawid S. Zyla, Cassandra Yu, Kelly C.L. Shaffer, Victoria I. Lewis, Ruben Diaz Avalos, Tomas Mustelin, and Erica Ollmann Saphire. (*co-first author)
- CAR T immune synapse 3D molecular architecture visualized by cryo-CLEM guided cryo-ET. (In preparation) Chen Sun, Joshua Oak, Zbigniew Mikulski, Sara McArdle, Felipe Galvez, Amy Coddington, Suzie Tygart, Elizabeth Fink, Arvin Tam, Ruben Diaz Avalos, Michelle Zandonatti, Reika Watanabe, Taichi Okumura, Kathryn Hastie, Rachel Soloff, Masayuki Kai, Gunnar Kaufmann, Erica Ollmann Saphire.
- The 2.6 Å Structure of a Tulane Virus Variant with Minor Mutations Leading to Receptor Change. Biomolecules 2024. 14, no. 1: 119. Chen Sun, Pengwei Huang, Xueyong Xu, Frank S. Vago, Kunpeng Li, Thomas Klose, Xi Jason Jiang, and Wen Jiang.
- Helical Indexing in Real Space. Scientific Reports (2022), 12, 8162. Chen Sun, Brenda Gonzalez, Wen Jiang.
Host:
Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics (contact: tamsinlindstrom@ki.se)