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Ulrike Eggert: The roles of lipids in cell biology
Institute of Molecular Cells and Systems Biology Invited Seminar
4th December 2019
Ulrike Eggert
Lay summary/background: Mammalian cells have about 10000 different lipids at any given time. Many of these lipids are associated with membranes that either surround the cells - the plasma membrane or form membrane surrounded organelles inside the cells such as the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi apparatus with associated vesicles, endosomes or mitochondria. It is known that the membrane composition changes with the radius of curvature e.g. small diameter vesicles have a different phospho-lipid composition than e.g. the flat aspects of the ER. It is not easy to access and interrogate the lipid composition as tagging small lipids may interfere with their function, standards are hard to come by, and genetic interference is indirect by addressing enzymes by knocking them out or changing their function. After cell division the daughter cells stay connected via a thin strand of membrane surrounded cytoplasm called the mid-body (high radius of curvature). In one example the group around Prof Eggert investigated the lipid composition of the mid body by clever coupling of cell synchronisation to mid-body isolation and LC-MS analysis - it turned out that about 11 lipids are up-regulated in the mid-body. These lipids are also harder to indent and form multilayered structures as visualised by atomic force spectroscopy and microscopy. More details in the papers below.
Papers mentioned in the talk:
More about Ulrike's work:
