Ceramides attract wide attention as tumor suppressor lipids that can act directly on mitochondria to trigger Bax-mediated cell death. While ceramide engagement in mitochondrial apoptosis is clinically relevant, molecular details of the underlying mechanism are largely unknown. A chemical screen for ceramide binding proteins combined with molecular dynamics simulations and functional studies in...
Induced membrane permeabilization or leakage is often taken as an indication for activity of a membrane-active effector molecule, such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) or their synthetic mimics. Nevertheless, it is poorly understood, what effect (or combination of effects) is actually required for antimicrobial activity.
What is often missing is the knowledge of the exact leakage mechanism as...
Spectrin is a cytoskeleton protein present in eukaryotic cells, contributing to membrane stability cooperating with actin and ankyrin. Our proteome analysis identified that Spectrin highly associates with Phosphatidylserine (PS) containing vesicles. However, the importance of the interaction between PS and Spectrin remains poorly understand. Therefore, we examined distribution of Spectrin βII,...
