Research from Jeanne Stachowiak’s lab, recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, brings a better understanding of the role of lipid rafts as concentrators of membrane proteins, which have implications in the fields of drug delivery and molecular medicine.
Dr. Jeanne Stachowiak with graduate student Christine Scheve.
Research from Jeanne Stachowiak’s lab, recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, brings a better understanding of the role of lipid rafts as concentrators of membrane proteins, which have implications in the fields of drug delivery and molecular medicine.
The paper, Steric Pressure between Membrane-Bound Proteins Opposes Lipid Phase Separation, is authored by BME graduate student Christine Scheve and undergraduate students Paul Gonzales and Noor Momin. In it, researchers describe that cell surfaces are densely crowded with a diverse population of membrane-associated proteins. It has been widely thought that lipid rafts, regions of the membrane enriched in cholesterol and other lipids, have the ability to organize these proteins, enabling cellular signaling. In this work, the researchers demonstrate that in the crowded environment of the cell, collisions between membrane proteins create pressure on the membrane surface that can dissolve rafts, eliminating their ability to organize membranes.
This research is significant because it gives scientists a more comprehensive understanding of cellular processes that are thought to depend on rafts, including signaling, viral infection by cells, and the activation of immune cells. Using this knowledge, Scheve and Stachowiak are now working to develop drug delivery systems that manipulate rafts. This strategy may provide new opportunities to target diseased cells more specifically, leading to better therapeutic options for conditions such as cancer and asthma.
