Conveners
Biological membranes, surfaces and interfaces
- Giovanna Fragneto
Biological membranes, surfaces and interfaces
- Sebastian Jaksch (Physicist)
Biological membranes, surfaces and interfaces
- Hanna Wacklin-Knecht (European Spallation Source)
Escherichia coli bacteria secrete colicins, a class of antibacterial proteins to kill closely related competing strains. This relies on the surprising ability of these toxins to cross the Gram-negative outer membrane (OM), a robust, impermeable, asymmetric lipid bilayer comprising an outer leaflet of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and an inner leaflet of phospholipid. Colicins attach to their target...
Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is a crucial cell biology process allowing internalization of many cell-surface proteins, and other cargo, in eukaryotes. Clathrin-coated vesicles (CCVs) are assembled with their cargo at the plasma membrane, then transport to the early endosome inside the cell. A CCV consists of a clathrin scaffold coating a lipid vesicle, in which the cargo is embedded, linked...
Neutron scattering experiments involving soft matter materials often require specific contrast to observe different parts of the materials. In order to increase the availability of deuterium labelled materials, we are establishing deuteration support to MLZ users. Proposals for the deuteration support can now be submitted in combination with proposals for neutron beamtime.
Our main...
The dynamical properties of lipid membranes play an important role in how cells, virus and organelles interact with the world around them. These properties arise from a complex interplay of forces over a wide range of time and length scales and, as such, are ideally suited for study with neutron spin echo (NSE) spectroscopy. Recently, the NSE technique has been extended to grazing incidence...
The fourth enzymatic reaction in the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis, the oxidation of dihydroorotate to orotate, is catalyzed by dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH). Enzymes belonging to the DHODH Class II are membrane-bound proteins that use ubiquinone as their electron acceptor. We designed this study to understand the interaction of an N-terminally truncated version of human DHODH...
Polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is found in very high concentrations in a few peculiar tissues. DHA was proposed to affect the function of the cell membrane and related proteins through an indirect mechanism of action, based on the DHA-phospholipid effects on the bilayer structure. Most studies have focused on its influence on lipid-rafts, neglecting the effects...
After an introduction into strategies for controlling the time-averaged behavior of aqueous protein solutions in the bulk at near interfaces, we discuss their dynamical behavior.
First, this concerns the impact of temperature, salt concentration, protein concentration and other control parameters on the diffusion in equilibrium.
Second, we study how the dynamics in these complex systems...
KRas4B is a membrane-anchored signaling protein and primary target in cancer research. Predictions from molecular dynamics simulations have previously shaped our mechanistic understanding of KRas signaling but disagree with recent experimental results from neutron reflectometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and thermodynamic binding studies [1]. We compare this body of biophysical data to...
We synthesized the non-ionic alternating amphiphilic polymers containing dicarboxylic acids as hydrophobic blocks and ethylene glycol oligomers as hydrophilic, and studied their properties. The lengths of the building blocks and their mass ratio allows tuning the amphiphilicity of the polymer chains in a wide range. As a consequence the polymers either dissolve in water as free chains or form...
