Sprecher
Beschreibung
The cell membrane organizes and protects life in its role as a responsive interface and selective barrier. Lipids, the fatty amphiphilic molecules that make up the membrane bilayer, are central to membrane function. But we have no idea why cells tightly regulate the synthesis of hundreds of membrane lipids when one lipid is enough to form a bilayer. What is all that complexity good for? What role did it play in the origin and evolution of cells? And can we understand how to harness lipid diversity to engineer membranes for synthetic life? The combination of lipid structures that make up a membrane determines its physical properties, which ultimately influence membrane function and cellular fitness. So, while one lipid can form a membrane, more than one lipid is required to build a membrane that can optimize its properties to physiological and environmental demands. We've established genomically minimal bacterial systems—notably pathogenic mycoplasma and the Minimal Cell (JCVI-syn3B)—as modifiable membrane platforms. This approach allows us to tune and minimize their lipidomes, demonstrating that two lipids are sufficient (but far from optimal) for life. Using these minimal bacterial organisms, we can reintroduce genomic and chemical complexity to elucidate the crucial components of a functional cell membrane. Ultimately, our goal is to understand how the material properties essential for life are genomically encoded—so that we can reconstruct their evolutionary origins and design programmable membranes for synthetic life.
