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Message boards : News : Uncovering the role of membrane lipids in modulating enzyme activity

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Message 35000 - Posted: 12 Feb 2014 | 16:19:01 UTC

Hello everyone,

At the end of last year, we updated the badge system to include several new publications we had just published. Today we want to highlight one of those pieces of work.

Starting in Mid-2011 (an eternity ago), we began collaborating with a research group in Italy to better understand something strange they had been seeing in their experiments. Specifically, they were seeing that when they modified the composition of lipids in a cell membrane, the activity of an enzyme named FAAH increased. They came to us to try to better understand why that was happening. Through simulations performed here on GPUGRID we discovered that, contrary to expectations, the lipids modified the function of the enzyme by directly interacting with it and its endogenous ligand. It had been expected that structural changes in the membrane would be the culprit, but that was not the case. Additionally, we report the first unbiased binding of a lipid to a membrane protein. This is one of the first experiments of this kind ever performed, and was possible only because of the compute power we have here at GPUGRID. You can read more about it on the science page here, as well as check out the video of the binding event.

Please note that (almost) all the papers we publish are available on our lab webpage. They can be found here. The versions of the documents there are the pre-print versions, basically meaning they are not formatted to look pretty. This is due to restrictions placed on us by the publishing companies. The text and figures are identical to those in the "pretty" version published in the journal, however. We are working on putting out copies of any papers missing from that page.

Lastly, we remind you that GPUGRID accepts donations beyond compute time, and if you're interested you can see how to do so on our Donations page. Of course, the crunching time donated by all of you is greatly appreciated.

Thanks and onward,
The GPUGRID Team

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Message 35001 - Posted: 12 Feb 2014 | 17:10:20 UTC - in response to Message 35000.

That's why I like this project... tangible results, in this case a better understanding of how membrane lipids modulate enzyme activity. Incredible stuff! The support from crunchers here is awesome but even more awesome is the work and talent you and the rest of the research team contributes in designing the simulations. Without that our massive compute power would accomplish nothing.

Thanks for the report, Nathan.

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Message 35349 - Posted: 25 Feb 2014 | 21:16:10 UTC

Thanks for this post and the good work you guys are doing!

MrS
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John C MacAlister
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Message 35351 - Posted: 25 Feb 2014 | 22:51:04 UTC - in response to Message 35000.

Hi, Nathan:

Many thanks for the information and especially the tangible research results noted. As a cruncher, I need to see that my input helps create usable information: the credits give immediate recognition for completed work. In the near future I will be adding another NVIDIA card to my recently built FX-6300 based machine.

Keep up the great work, researchers and crunchers.

John


Hello everyone,

At the end of last year, we updated the badge system to include several new publications we had just published. Today we want to highlight one of those pieces of work.

Starting in Mid-2011 (an eternity ago), we began collaborating with a research group in Italy to better understand something strange they had been seeing in their experiments. Specifically, they were seeing that when they modified the composition of lipids in a cell membrane, the activity of an enzyme named FAAH increased. They came to us to try to better understand why that was happening. Through simulations performed here on GPUGRID we discovered that, contrary to expectations, the lipids modified the function of the enzyme by directly interacting with it and its endogenous ligand. It had been expected that structural changes in the membrane would be the culprit, but that was not the case. Additionally, we report the first unbiased binding of a lipid to a membrane protein. This is one of the first experiments of this kind ever performed, and was possible only because of the compute power we have here at GPUGRID. You can read more about it on the science page here, as well as check out the video of the binding event.

Please note that (almost) all the papers we publish are available on our lab webpage. They can be found here. The versions of the documents there are the pre-print versions, basically meaning they are not formatted to look pretty. This is due to restrictions placed on us by the publishing companies. The text and figures are identical to those in the "pretty" version published in the journal, however. We are working on putting out copies of any papers missing from that page.

Lastly, we remind you that GPUGRID accepts donations beyond compute time, and if you're interested you can see how to do so on our Donations page. Of course, the crunching time donated by all of you is greatly appreciated.

Thanks and onward,
The GPUGRID Team

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Message 35355 - Posted: 26 Feb 2014 | 0:04:45 UTC

This kind of news are the most motivating for crunchers. Thanks for keeping us informed.
Ther's a web page on BOINC with all publications of every project, don't forget to publicitate your results there, that's some extra pub.

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Message boards : News : Uncovering the role of membrane lipids in modulating enzyme activity

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