Lipid Function in the Nucleus
in Health and Disease
Lipids represent one of the fundamental building blocks of all living matter and are essential for life. At the cellular level they are structural components of all cellular membranes but also function as energy stores, cellular signalling molecules, precursors to steroid hormones and regulators of transcription factors.
For a long time, lipids have been considered as structure-less molecules that are used as passive barriers for cells and organelles. However, recent lipidomics analyses in mammalian cells have highlighted the dynamic remodelling of different lipid species in health and diseases. In addition, lipids are not only required for a wide array of cellular functions but they are emerging to differently regulate cellular functions due to their compartmentalisation to discrete areas of the cells, adding hence another level of control.
Lipids in the nucleus: what are they doing there?
Many of lipid functions, and in particular that of phospholipids (PLs), tend to be studied at the plasma membrane but are generally less understood in the different organelles of the cell. To decipher the precise functions of lipids in complex with proteins within the nucleus, we have focused our studies on mapping protein-PL interactomes formed in this organelle in healthy and pathological states for which the phospholipid metabolic pathways are known to be altered, particularly in obesity, insulin resistance and cancer.
Our group is therefore interested in addressing the following questions:
1. Which protein-PL interactions are formed in the nucleus and how?
2. What are the functions of these interactions?
3. Which protein-lipid interactions are disrupted in cancer and insulin resistance and contribute to the development of these diseases?
To learn more about protein-lipid interactomes, check our book chapter on "Functional Proteomics: Mapping Lipid-Protein Interactomes" published in the book entitled Integrative Proteomics, 2012:
Group Members
Aurélia E LEWIS - Group leader, view research profile, 55 58 45 21
Rhian G. MORGAN - PhD student from 8th Oct 2012 (UiB)
Fatemeh MAZLOUMI GAVGANI - PhD student from 6th Dec 2013 joint with Prof. Rein Aasland (UiB)
Olena DOBROVOLSKA - Postdoc - joint with NucReg
Marta Forcadell Ferre - ERASMUS bachelor student from U. Barcelona (Spring 2016)
Location: Lab 2 - NucReg Research Program
Høyteknologisenteret i Bergen, Bioblokken, 5th floor, Thormølensgate 55, 5008 Bergen, Location