Dr Steven Harborne Will Be Presenting at the European SMALP Conference 2022
Dr Steven Harborne will be presenting at the European SMALP Conference at the Macdonald Burlington Hotel, Birmingham, UK from April 6th to 8th.
Steve commented, “I was due to go to the International SMALP Conference on Friday 20th March 2020 which originally was going to take place at the Alumni Hall, Columbia University in New York. That Conference was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It is so good to be back attending face-2-face conferences again. I am really looking forward to meeting up with old colleagues and new”.
“Membrane proteins are an incredibly important group of proteins. Researchers estimate that 35% all marketed drugs act by binding to GPCRs, the largest and most diverse group of membrane receptors in eukaryotes. For us at Peak Proteins finding more effective and efficient commercial methods for producing membrane proteins that can be purified and used as reagents is of significant interest”, added Steve.
“Preparation of GPCRs in SMALP for Biophysical Characterisation”
Steve will be presenting “”Preparation of GPCRs in SMALP for Biophysical Characterisation”.
Talk Abstract:
Peak Proteins aims to supply high-quality protein reagents for many purposes, often to be used in biophysical assays to assist drug-discovery. Membrane proteins present a number of technical challenges to this workflow, such as; poor expression, solubilisation and stability. Thus, we have explored how styrene-maleic acid lipid particles (SMALPs) may help us overcome these difficulties.
Using a small panel of well-characterised human GPCRs, we explored differences in biophysical characteristics between SMA solubilised and n-Dodecyl β-D-maltoside (DDM) solubilised receptors. We have found a number of advantages and disadvantages to using SMALPs compared to detergent, both on a technical level and the biophysical properties of receptors. In order to successfully purify GPCRs from Sf21 insect cell expression, there were a few tricks we needed to employ.
References:
- Hardy D, Bill RM, Jawhari A, Rothnie AJ (2016) Overcoming bottlenecks in the membrane protein structural biology pipeline. Biochem Soc Trans 44(3):838–844.
- Vaidehi N, Grisshammer R, Tate CG (2016) How Can Mutations Thermostabilize G-Protein-Coupled Receptors? Trends Pharmacol Sci 37(1):37–46.
- Harborne SPD, et al. (2020) IMPROvER: the Integral Membrane Protein Stability Selector. Sci Rep 10(1):15165.
SMALP
The application of styrene-maleic acid (SMA) co-polymers to extract small discs of membrane, termed SMA lipid particles (SMALPs), has changed the established landscape of research in biological membranes.
Membrane proteins play a vital role in cellular communication and the control of transport across the membrane, making them key therapeutic targets for many human diseases. Their location within the membrane, tightly packed with so many different proteins and lipids has, until now, made them extremely challenging to study.
