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The Somerharju Lipid Group
Navigate:Contact information: Contact person: Pentti Somerharju Institute of Biomedicine/Biochemistry (P.O. Box 63 Haartmaninkatu 8; Biomedicum) 00014 University of Helsinki phone +358-(0)9-191 25410 fax +358-(0)9-191 25444 e-mail: firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi |
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Research
The research of our group focuses on the regulation of lipid composition of membranes in mammalian cells. The key hypothesis is that membrane lipids have a significant tendency to adopt regular/even (rather than random) lateral distributions. See this poster for further details. From this putative tendency it would necessarily follow that a number of "critical" compositions exist. These compositions would be inherently more stable than any another composition and could thus act as regulatory "set-points" for key synthetic enzymes and regulatory phospholipases. We are also studying the mechanisms of intracellular phospholipid and cholesterol trafficking as they are intimately involved in membrane lipid homeostasis ( Koivusalo et. al. 2007). On the method side, we are focusing on compositional and metabolic analysis of lipids based on ESI-MS/MS and ESI-LC-MS ( Haimi et. al. 2006, Hermansson et. al. 2005) as well as on imaging of fluorescent (pyrene) lipid distribution and trafficking in living cells ( Somerharju 2002 ). List of Publications |