Chemical Engineering

Chemical Engineering Colloquia Seminar: Leonid Chernomordik, Section on Membrane Biology, NIH

Protein-Lipid Interplay in Membrane Fusion

Intracellular protein trafficking, cell invasion by enveloped viruses, and syncytia formation in development, all these processes share a common stage of membrane fusion. To identify the conserved and divergent mechanisms by which protein fusogens merge membrane bilayers, we explore fusion mediated by well characterized viral fusogens (such as dengue virus E protein and influenza virus hemagglutinin) and by poorly characterized and mostly unidentified proteins involved in developmental cell fusion (such as C. elegans proteins EFF1 and AFF1 and yet unknown proteins that fuse myoblasts). Most of the research on fusion mechanisms (including our earlier work) has been focused on the fusogen-driven pathway that culminates in the fusion pore opening. However, in the case of cell-cell fusion, opening of small fusion pore(s) is only the beginning of the process that results in the loss of membrane junction between the cells and joins the cells into syncytium. Thus, in addition to the work on the early fusion stages we are now interested in the mechanisms by which fusion pores formed by “professional” fusogens are then expanded by cell machinery. We hope that better understanding of protein-lipid interplay at different fusion stages will bring about useful insights into mechanisms by which proteins break and reassemble membrane bilayers and new ways of controlling membrane fusion in pathophysiology.

Coffee and donuts will be served at 3:30 pm in 824 Mudd