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Talk by Anthony H. Futerman

Title: "What is special about sphingolipids?"
Occasion: SFB SpecialSeminar
Start: 25.03.2025 4:15 pm
Location: CellNanOs, 38/201

About the speaker: Prof. Anthony H. Futerman conducts research at the Department of Biomolecular Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

Sphingolipids display a number of characteristics which make them unique among membrane lipids, including their compartmentalized biosynthesis between the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi apparatus, the number of distinct mechanisms that can regulate the pathway, and their ability to forms lateral domains within the lipid bilayer, which may be helped by their ability to donate hydrogen bonds at the interface region of the bilayer. I will discuss each of these features, and then discuss the somewhat controversial topic of whether Darwinian mutational pathways can explain the emergence of the sphingolipid biosynthetic pathway.