Bulletin

Issue: June 2006

Research in Action

Shining light through membranes for better medicine

Biochemists at La Trobe University are playing a leading role in research aimed at better understanding the workings of membranes in our bodies.

So important are the activities of membranes to our health that seventy per cent of the drugs on the market today are targeted to influence the activity of membrane proteins.

La Trobe Professor of Biochemistry, Leann Tilley, is one of a research team from a number of universities and other institutions to receive an Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities grant of $1,047,000.

The research aims to help develop frontier technologies for biomedical and nanotechnological studies of membrane proteins which involve furthering knowledge about their structure, dynamics and function.

Professor Tilley said that membranes in our cells provide the barriers between different compartments where the various reactions of life take place.

'Proteins within the membranes provide communication ports between different cells and different "rooms" within the cells and allow specific compounds to cross the barriers.

'Some membranes transmit the electrical signals that allow our nerves to carry information, while some capture light - which allows our eyes to see and plants to carry out photosynthesis.

'Some membrane components are targeted by foreign organisms as a means of gaining entry into our cells. If we could understand the architecture and machinery of these important life processes, we would be in a better position to design ways of modulating them.

'While about seventy per cent of drugs on the market today exert their activities by targeting membrane proteins, fifty per cent of the top 100 drugs target one class of membrane receptors - the so-called Gprotein coupled receptors.

'We need to know more about the structures of membrane proteins, including the way they are organised in the membrane, the way they interact with ligands or drugs, the way they signal through to messenger systems within the cell interior. This would greatly facilitate the rational design of novel drugs to target conditions such as inflammation, depression, and pain.

'The grant will allow the purchase of state-of-the-art instrumentation for nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, fluorescence microscopy and surface plasmon resonance to study the structure and interactions of membrane proteins,' Professor Tilley said.

She and her colleague, Research Fellow Dr Nick Klonis, will buy a fluorescence correlation spectroscopy microscope, valued at $550,000, and install it in the confocal microscope facility at La Trobe University by the middle of the year.

Other researchers involved are Professor Frances Separovic (University of Melbourne), Associate Professor Mibel Aguilar (Monash) plus others from a number of partner institutions including RMIT, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Department of Primary Industries.