UC professor organizes the roles of cell membranes

Cells have to be resilient to stay alive. A researcher at the University of Cincinnati is studying how one part of the cell membrane can help with this survival.

UC assistant professor Jonathan Nickels and an international team of collaborators recently published a paper supporting their hypothesis that lipid rafts, small patches of lipids and proteins within cell membranes, can help maintain a membrane’s structure against changes in the environment. The work appeared as the cover story in the Journal of Physical Chemistry.

Nickels’ research in cell membranes reflects the innovation agenda platform of UC’s strategic direction, Next Lives Here.

Traditionally, people are taught that cell membranes are a lipid bilayer with a random mixture of proteins, Nickels said. Many scientists, however, now believe that proteins within cell membranes actually organize with the help of platforms called lipid rafts.

Proteins cluster together on these rafts, which allow the proteins to find their binding partners faster. When that happens, the proteins can carry out the cell membrane’s functions better, like transmitting signals to and from the cell.

But that’s not all these rafts do, according to Nickels.

“We suggest that these lipid rafts can play a role in buffering the physical properties of the membrane,” Nickels said. “This buffering is potentially advantageous for a cell in a rapidly changing environment.”

Nickels and coworkers ran experiments on a model of a cell membrane that tested the model against environmental changes, like temperature. The results showed that lipid rafts could maintain the cell membrane’s physical properties, like thickness, fluidity and flexiblity, within a change of 15 degrees Celsius.

These results show that lipid rafts, a relatively new idea in biological science, may actually be inherent to the cell’s survival. Nickels’ research can provide more answers on the workings of cells and, in turn, the broader workings of the living world.