Anant Menon
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Biochemistry
Cell membranes are built from two layers of lipids, and many lipids must cross from one layer to the other. This "flip-flop" is needed to build mitochondria (the cell's energy producers), grow the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), attach sugars to proteins, and make blood group antigens.
- Fields
Biochemistry
Biology
Biophysics
- Topics
lipid scramblases
lipid flip-flop
phospholipid transport
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Feb 2031
What they work on
- Determine how newly discovered phospholipid scramblases in the outer mitochondrial membrane move lipids, and define their contributions to mitochondrial growth and biogenesis, using a multidisciplinary suite of methods.
- Identify the ER scramblases that flip the sugar-donor lipids MPD and GPD, using photo-clickable probes to capture interacting proteins, quantitative proteomics and reconstitution-based scramblase assays.
- Find GPD scramblase candidates by phylogenetic profiling, a method predicting protein function from gene patterns across species, and validate MPD and GPD candidates through yeast mutant phenotypes.
- Characterize the phospholipid scramblase activity of the Drosophila opsin NINAE by purifying it from fly eyes and reconstituting it into liposomes, artificial lipid vesicles.
- Test how NINAE scrambles lipids by mutating residues predicted by molecular dynamics simulations, and measure effects on photo- and mechanoreceptors and behavior with electrophysiology, electron microscopy and behavioral assays.
More about the research
It also exposes the signaling lipid phosphatidylserine on the cell surface, which triggers blood clotting, marks dying cells for removal and helps cells fuse. Proteins called scramblases make this possible by acting as lipid channels. The lab's research asks which proteins do this in specific processes, how they work, what they contribute to physiology and how they are controlled. The team has previously discovered scramblase activity in Class A GPCRs, a large family of cell-surface receptors, and was first to show lipid scrambling by a TMEM16 ion channel.
Why it matters
Defects in protein glycosylation cause congenital disorders of glycosylation, muscular dystrophy and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria. Mitochondrial dysfunction is tied to inborn metabolic errors, cancer, heart and neurodegenerative disease, and Barth syndrome. Identifying the scramblases behind these processes could reveal new genes linked to these diseases and clarify how they arise.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erin Barnhart
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Compare calcium signals in the cytosol and in the endoplasmic reticulum, the neuron's main calcium store, across defined Drosophila motion vision cell types, using simultaneous in vivo imaging in living flies.
John Hancock
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Biochemistry
Test whether glycosphingolipids act as spatial organizers of the inner plasma membrane and ER-plasma membrane contact sites, using lipid biosensors and high-resolution imaging.
Rebecca Delventhal
Lake Forest College, IL·Biology
Determine whether glial EMC4, a subunit of the ER membrane protein complex, is required during development or for maintenance of the adult fly, by timing RNAi knockdown across life stages in Drosophila.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
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