Structural dynamics of active metal transport across membranes
Title: Structural dynamics of active metal transport across membranes
DNr: SNIC 2021/5-362
Project Type: SNIC Medium Compute
Principal Investigator: Magnus Andersson <magnus.p.andersson@umu.se>
Affiliation: Umeå universitet
Duration: 2021-08-30 – 2022-03-01
Classification: 10601 10603
Homepage: https://www.umu.se/personal/magnus-p-andersson/
Keywords:

Abstract

Transport across biological membranes is critical to survival in all kingdoms of life and is mediated by proteins inserted into the lipid bilayer membrane. The goal of our research is to understand the fundamental physicochemical properties that underlie ATP-dependent (active) transport of metals. In our research, we use MD simulations to determine structural dynamics critical to membrane transport but difficult to assess with experimental methods. Examples are ion uptake, ion release, and ion binding. We also assess effects of different mutations to e.g. lipid interactions. Here we rely on high-resolution structures from our collaborator at University of Copenhagen. The other main part of the allocation will be used to perform structural refinement of time-resolved X-ray data (collected by the in-house experimental side of the lab). We have developed this protocol (Ravishankar et al., Science Advances, 2020) and will now finetune it further and also apply it to new protein systems.