About the project
We will study the influence of lipid oxidation on the ability of the membranes to interact with and to be impacted by proteins from the surrounding bilayer environment. Membranes with engineered and well-defined oxidation states will first be assembled to screen the membrane affinity to protein condensed phases, thus providing a map to guide the design of light-actuated interactions. Photo-induced oxidation will then be used to trigger attractive or repulsive interactions between protein condensates to the membrane. Light actuation will be used in combination with other techniques to study modification of membrane properties by interactions with condensates, and in particular to the formation or closure of pores under an electric field (new technology developed by Ionera, a partner of this consortium, will be used here). Furthermore, the action of oxidative or oxidation repairing proteins will be studied. Initiation of reactions at the membrane level will be triggered by modifying the membrane/condensates interactions by light, and theoretical tools will be developed to understand and predict the interplay between oxidative reactions at the membrane surface and in the bulk.
The project will include secondments at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands (Poolman Group), the University of Siena in Italy (Rossi Group), and the company Ionera to integrate their technology into the project.
Selected References
- Lafarge, E.J., Muller, P., Schroder, A.P., Zaitseva, E., Behrends, J.C. and Marques, C.M., 2023. Activation energy for pore opening in lipid membranes under an electric field. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(11), p.e2213112120. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213112120
- Morandi, M.I., Kluzek, M., Wolff, J., Schroder, A., Thalmann, F. and Marques, C.M., 2021. Accumulation of styrene oligomers alters lipid membrane phase order and miscibility. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(4), p.e2016037118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016037118
- Itri, I., Marques, C.M. and Baptista, M., Shining light on membranes, The Giant Vesicle Book, (2019), CRC Press, Boca Raton.
Doctoral Candidate: Sifre van Teeffelen
Sifre completed both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Molecular Life Sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Her academic path has been shaped by interdisciplinary research experiences and international collaboration.
During her Master’s thesis, she investigated a supramolecular sensing platform using quantum dots and bivalent linker molecules for lectin detection. She completed an internship at the BioSense Institute in Serbia, contributing to the development of an electrochemical sensor for detecting genetically modified crops. Alongside her studies, she participated in the international SensUs competition, where her team designed a quantitative lateral flow assay for the detection of glial fibrillary acidic protein, a biomarker for traumatic brain injury.
Hosted by:
Carlos Marques
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
ENS de Lyon, Chemistry Laboratory
perso.ens-lyon.fr/carlos.marques
