Conveners
R1-2 Membrane Biophysics Joint Session Part I (DPMB/DCMMP/BSC) | Session conjointe sur la biophysique des membranes I (DPMB/DPMCM/SBC)
- Maikel Rheinstadter (McMaster University)
- Zoya Leonenko (University of Waterloo)
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by dementia and memory loss for which no cure or prevention is available. Amyloid toxicity is a result of the non-specific interaction of toxic amyloid oligomers with the plasma membrane which induce damage and death of neuronal cells. Understanding these interactions is of high importance.
We studied interaction of amyloid...
Molecular biology is key to understand the origin of diseases and the molecular mode-of-action of drugs, which is essential for modern drug design. Neutron and x-ray scattering are amongst our most advanced tools to study such molecular structure and dynamics. Together with computer simulations they provide unprecedented capabilities in this respect. I will give examples of applications of...
Model membranes have been used for decades in solid-state NMR, and have been very useful to study lipid order and membrane proteins reconstituted in a bilayer environment. It is only since 2011 that solid-state NMR has been extended to the study of membrane molecules within intact cells, sometimes even living cells (1). After a brief historical introduction, we will focus on recent results...
The elimination of unwanted cells is essential to the survival of all living organisms. This process is under the control of a set of proteins called Bcl-2 family proteins, several of which cooperate to permeabilize the outer membrane of mitochondria, sentencing the cell to death. Using reconstituted membrane systems to which we add fluorescently labelled Bcl-2 family proteins (both an...
