The private life of lipids: small chemical changes that shape cell membranes

Our lab investigates how - and why - cells control the composition of their lipid membranes. In this talk, I will focus on our efforts to uncover how lipid composition is controlled in intracellular membranes and describe emerging biophysical models to explain its chemical diversity in cells. I will first highlight recent studies that demonstrate how surprisingly small modifications to lipid molecules drive membrane function. In the other, we uncovered how the shape of phospholipids - described by their spontaneous curvature - is a biophysical parameter that drives habitability and is actively maintained by distinct pathway in lipid metabolism. I will then focus on new chemical biology approaches we have developed to map phospholipids in cell membranes and determine factors that control their trafficking. A key advance has been the use of fluorogenic dyes in biorthogonal labeling reactions to enable compartment- and leaflet-specific detection of phospholipid pools. These tools allow cell biologists to interrogate lipid trafficking at ever-greater spatial details.

Speaker: Itay Budin, UC San Diego