Lipid transport machinery in cellular membranes

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Cells, the minimal unit of all life forms on Earth, use fat and water as the primary media to allow biological factors to operate in full function for cell survival. Fat is the building block of cellular barriers inside individual cells and on the cell surface. These barriers create waterproof compartments to allow multiple biological and chemical reactions to work simultaneously, and also provide gateways allowing reaction products to travel among the internal cell compartments or between adjacent cells. Lipids are the microscopic elements of fat, and to survive, cells keep the lipid pool in balance and place various kinds of lipids in their appropriate confines. The critical biological question is what controls the timely exchange of lipids across the fat barriers and the precise response to the total level of lipids in a living organism. Our research will investigate how lipids are moved across such fat barriers by protein machineries, a key element to understanding how cells survive. Specifically, this NSERC project will focus on a group of lipid trafficking proteins called “active lipid transporters”. This type of proteins resides in the fat barriers and consumes ATP (the primary energy currency in all living beings) to pump lipids from one side of the barriers to the other side. Our research team will study how this type of proteins works by analyzing the microscopic events underlying their fat-controlling function and by building models to see through the atomic details. Ultimately, our research program will lay the foundation for comprehensive understanding the chemical and physical basis that will explain the impact of inactivation of “active lipid transporters” on the cell survival in all living organisms.