Paula Booth | |
---|---|
Born | Paula Jane Booth |
Nationality | English |
Known for | Study of Lipids and Membranes |
Awards | Philip Leverhulme Prize |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Chemistry and Biochemistry |
Institutions | King's College, London |
Paula Jane Booth is an English chemist who holds the Daniell Chair of Chemistry at King's College London and is Head of Department. [1] Booth was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2003, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2008 and an ERC Advanced grant in 2012 for her novel work on investigating the mechanisms of biological self-assembly. [2] [3] [4]
Booth studied for a BA Hons in Chemistry at St John’s College, Oxford. Booth undertook a PhD to study the thermodynamic properties of electron transfer in Photosystem 2 reaction centres, at Imperial College, London, under the supervisor of George Porter and James Barber. Following a short fellowship at the Centre D-Etudes de Saclay outside Paris, Booth set up her own research group at the University of Oxford, whilst holding a Research Fellowship at Corpus Christi College. After this, Booth moved to Imperial College and then the University of Bristol where she was appointed professor in 2005. In 2014 Booth was appointed Daniell Chair and Head of Department at King's College London. [1] She is also on the academic staff at The London Centre for Nanotechnology. [5]
At the University of Bristol, Booth investigated the minimal lipid composition which allows insertion of membrane proteins. [6] [7] Booth's current research studies how membrane lipids impact on membrane protein folding and activity. [8] Booth also investigates the design of artificial membrane proteins and lipids to develop synthetic biology systems to apply to useful applications. [9] [10] Techniques from many disciplines are put to use by Booth to measure and alter properties of membrane lipids and proteins. [11] [12]
A transmembrane domain (TMD) is a membrane-spanning protein domain. TMDs generally adopt an alpha helix topological conformation, although some TMDs such as those in porins can adopt a different conformation. Because the interior of the lipid bilayer is hydrophobic, the amino acid residues in TMDs are often hydrophobic, although proteins such as membrane pumps and ion channels can contain polar residues. TMDs vary greatly in length, sequence, and hydrophobicity, adopting organelle-specific properties.
The lipid bilayer is a thin polar membrane made of two layers of lipid molecules. These membranes are flat sheets that form a continuous barrier around all cells. The cell membranes of almost all organisms and many viruses are made of a lipid bilayer, as are the nuclear membrane surrounding the cell nucleus, and membranes of the membrane-bound organelles in the cell. The lipid bilayer is the barrier that keeps ions, proteins and other molecules where they are needed and prevents them from diffusing into areas where they should not be. Lipid bilayers are ideally suited to this role, even though they are only a few nanometers in width, because they are impermeable to most water-soluble (hydrophilic) molecules. Bilayers are particularly impermeable to ions, which allows cells to regulate salt concentrations and pH by transporting ions across their membranes using proteins called ion pumps.
A nanodisc is a synthetic model membrane system which assists in the study of membrane proteins. Nanodiscs are discoidal proteins in which a lipid bilayer is surrounded by molecules that are amphipathic molecules including proteins, peptides, and synthetic polymers. It is composed of a lipid bilayer of phospholipids with the hydrophobic edge screened by two amphipathic proteins. These proteins are called membrane scaffolding proteins (MSP) and align in double belt formation. Nanodiscs are structurally very similar to discoidal high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and the MSPs are modified versions of apolipoprotein A1 (apoA1), the main constituent in HDL. Nanodiscs are useful in the study of membrane proteins because they can solubilise and stabilise membrane proteins and represent a more native environment than liposomes, detergent micelles, bicelles and amphipols.
A model lipid bilayer is any bilayer assembled in vitro, as opposed to the bilayer of natural cell membranes or covering various sub-cellular structures like the nucleus. They are used to study the fundamental properties of biological membranes in a simplified and well-controlled environment, and increasingly in bottom-up synthetic biology for the construction of artificial cells. A model bilayer can be made with either synthetic or natural lipids. The simplest model systems contain only a single pure synthetic lipid. More physiologically relevant model bilayers can be made with mixtures of several synthetic or natural lipids.
Membrane curvature is the geometrical measure or characterization of the curvature of membranes. The membranes can be naturally occurring or man-made (synthetic). An example of naturally occurring membrane is the lipid bilayer of cells, also known as cellular membranes. Synthetic membranes can be obtained by preparing aqueous solutions of certain lipids. The lipids will then "aggregate" and form various phases and structures. According to the conditions and the chemical structures of the lipid, different phases will be observed. For instance, the lipid POPC tends to form lamellar vesicles in solution, whereas smaller lipids, such as detergents, will form micelles if the CMC was reached.
Cyrus Homi Chothia was an English biochemist who was an emeritus scientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the University of Cambridge and emeritus fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
John David Sutherland FRS is a British chemist at Medical Research Council (MRC), Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division. His work on the possible chemistry of early life has been widely recognised.
The endocannabinoid transporters (eCBTs) are transport proteins for the endocannabinoids. Most neurotransmitters are water-soluble and require transmembrane proteins to transport them across the cell membrane. The endocannabinoids on the other hand, are non-charged lipids that readily cross lipid membranes. However, since the endocannabinoids are water immiscible, protein transporters have been described that act as carriers to solubilize and transport the endocannabinoids through the aqueous cytoplasm. These include the heat shock proteins (Hsp70s) and fatty acid-binding proteins for anandamide (FABPs). FABPs such as FABP1, FABP3, FABP5, and FABP7 have been shown to bind endocannabinoids. FABP inhibitors attenuate the breakdown of anandamide by the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) in cell culture. One of these inhibitors (SB-FI-26), isolated from a virtual library of a million compounds, belongs to a class of compounds that act as an anti-nociceptive agent with mild anti-inflammatory activity in mice. These truxillic acids and their derivatives have been known to have anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive effects in mice and are active components of a Chinese herbal medicine used to treat rheumatism and pain in human. The blockade of anandamide transport may, at least in part, be the mechanism through which these compounds exert their anti-nociceptive effects.
Sheena Elizabeth Radford FRS FMedSci is a British biophysicist, and Astbury Professor of Biophysics in the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Leeds. Radford is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.
Christine Anne Orengo is a Professor of Bioinformatics at University College London (UCL) known for her work on protein structure, particularly the CATH database. Orengo serves as president of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), the first woman to do so in the history of the society.
Ramanujan Shankar Hegde is a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).
Kai Simons is a Finnish professor of biochemistry and cell biology and physician living and working in Germany. He introduced the concept of lipid rafts, as well as coined the term trans-Golgi network and proposed its role in protein and lipid sorting. The co-founder and co-organizer of EMBO, ELSO, Simons initiated the foundation of MPI-CBG, where he acted as a director (1998–2006) and a group-leader. He is the co-founder and co-owner of Lipotype GmbH.
Alice Vrielink is a structural biologist and Professor of Structural Biology in the School of Molecular Sciences at the University of Western Australia. She is known for her work determining the structures of macromolecules such as enzymes and nucleic acids.
Anne Jacqueline Ridley is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London.
Victoria Haigh Cowling is an English biologist who received the Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology in 2014. Cowling is Professor of Biology, Lister Institute Fellow, MRC Senior Fellow and Deputy Head of The Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression at the University of Dundee.
Sarah L. Keller is an American biophysicist, studying problems at the intersection between biology and chemistry. She investigates self-assembling soft matter systems. Her current main research focus is understanding how simple lipid mixtures within bilayer membranes give rise to membrane's complex phase behavior.
Jean Vance is a British-Canadian biochemist. She is known for her pioneering work on subcellular organelles and for her discovery of a connection between the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondrial membrane. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Berend (Bert) Poolman is a Dutch biochemist, as specialist in bioenergetics of microorganisms and membrane transport. He is a professor of Biochemistry at the University of Groningen and an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2009. Poolman is a pioneer in the field of bottom-up synthetic biology, that is, the construction from molecular building blocks of functional metabolic networks and autonomously operating functional systems, which are typical of living cells. Poolman is a lecturer in membrane biology and synthetic biology.
Derek Dek Woolfson is a British chemist and biochemist. He is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry. and director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute at the University of Bristol, and founder of synthetic biology spin-out company Rosa Biotech.
Françoise Gisou van der Goot is a Swiss-Dutch cell biologist. She is a professor and the Vice President for Responsible Transformation at EPFL.