Seminar

Glycolipid transfer protein fold: A new protein superfamily emerges

Prof. Rhoderick E. Brown

Biomembranes are barriers that maintain the integrity of cells, while enabling desired substances to enter and toxic by-products to exit. Biomembranes also divide the cell interior into different specialized compartments. Over the past several years, research in Professor Rhoderick's lab has provided fundamental insights into how different lipids mix together to change the physical environment in the membrane in ways that can either facilitate or impede interaction with proteins. Their research has focused on a specific class of membrane lipids known as sphingolipids. Much recent effort has been directed towards a family of mammalian proteins, called glycolipid transfer proteins (GLTPs), that specifically bind and transfer glycosphingolipids between membranes. The GLTP superfamily is defined by the human GLTP-fold, which represents a novel motif for lipid binding/transfer and for reversible interaction with membranes. Despite limited sequence homology with human GLTP, they recently showed that HET-C2 GLTP of Podospora anserina is organized conformationally as a GLTP-fold. Issues related to functional comparison of both proteins will be considered.