Chang Wang of the Regen Group

Graduate student Chang Wang will be presenting 

Lipid Raft Formation: Push-Pull Forces

March 7, 2017 at 4:10 PM in Neville Hall, Room 3

 

Abstract: The lipid raft hypothesis is considered to be one of the most significant concepts in cell membrane research that has evolved over the past two decades.1  In essence, lipid rafts are presumed to be tightly packed aggregates of cholesterol and sphingolipids that “float in a sea” of fluid phospholipids.  Despite its popularity, many basic questions surrounding the lipid raft hypothesis remain unanswered.  For example, their size, lifetime and biological functions have not been firmly established.  At a more fundamental level, the forces driving the formation of lipid rafts are not well understood.  In this presentation I will report recent experiments those were carried out using the “nearest-neighbor recognition” (NNR) method and model systems, which not only can account for formation of lipid rafts, but also highlight an important and heretofore, unrecognized role that polyunsaturated phospholipids are likely to play in this process.2,3 References 1. Simons, K.; Ikonen, E. Nature, 1997, 387, 569-572. 2. Wang, C.; Krause, M. R.; Regen, S. L. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2015, 137, 664-666. 3. Wang, C.; Yu, Y.; Regen, S. L. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2017, 56, 1639-1642.