Many membrane proteins bind specifically to lipids as an integral component of their structures. The ability of detergents to support lipid binding is thus an important consideration when solubilizing membrane proteins for structural studies. In particular, the zwitterionic phosphocholine (PC)-based detergents, which have been widely used in solution NMR studies of channels and transporters, ar...

Emerging evidence indicates that mitochondrial cardiolipins (CL) are prone to free radical oxidation and this process appears to be intimately associated with multiple biological functions of mitochondria. Our previous work demonstrated that a significant amount of potent lipid electrophiles including 4-hydroxy-nonenal (4-HNE) was generated from CL oxidation through a novel chemical mechanism. ...

Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 7136 exhibited major changes in lipid composition when grown in the presence of either 0.15% sodium deoxycholate or 0.15% sodium benzoate. These lipophilic compounds had directly opposing effects on the lipid profile of the organism. The saturated/unsaturated ratio was markedly elevated in benzoate-grown cells. On the other hand, it was depressed by an even greater m...

Ambient ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has been increasingly used to investigate the molecular distribution of biological tissue samples. Here, we report the integration and optimization of desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) and liquid-microjunction surface sampling probe (LMJ-SSP) with a chip-based high-field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) device to im...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a fatal disorder associated with germline trinucleotide repeat expansions in the HTT gene and characterised by striatal neurodegeneration. No efficacious interventions are available for HD, highlighting major unmet medical need. The molecular mechanisms underlying HD incompletely understood despite its monogenic aetiology. However, direct interactions between membra...

Relatively little is known about the functions of specific molecular interactions between membrane proteins and membrane lipids. The structural and functional consequences of disrupting a previously identified interaction between a molecule of the diacidic lipid cardiolipin and the purple bacterial reaction centre were examined. Mutagenesis of a highly conserved arginine (M267) that is responsi...

Controls and calibrators in autoimmune assays are typically developed from patient sera. However, the use of sera is accompanied by a number of disadvantages, such as lack of monospecificity, lack of assay comparability, and supply limitations. Ideally, the control reagent would be an antigen-specific human monoclonal antibody preparation that is defined and pure, easy to produce without any su...

We examined whether cardiolipin (CL) synthesis was required to support cholesterol (CH) production from palmitate in Hela cells. Knockdown of human cardiolipin synthase-1 (hCLS1) in Hela cells has been shown to reduce CL synthesis. Therefore Hela cells stably expressing shRNA for hCLS1 and mock control cells were incubated for 16 h with [14C(U)]palmitate bound to albumin (1:1 molar ratio) in th...

The BH3-only protein Bid plays a key role in the induction of mitochondrial apoptosis, but its mechanism of action is still not completely understood. Here we studied the two main activation events of Bid: Caspase-8 cleavage and interaction with the membrane bilayer. We found a striking reversible behaviour of the dissociation-association events between the Bid fragments p15 and p7. Caspase-8 c...

Anti-phosphatidylglycerol and anti-cardiolipin antisera were prepared in rabbits by using phospholipids purified from Micrococcus lysodeikticus. Anti-phosphatidylglycerol antibodies were found in antisera when either phosphatidylglycerol or cardiolipin were used as immunogens, but adsorption studies indicated they were not similar. Antibodies which reacted with phosphatidylinositol and phosphat...