P11 BRC HAS
From LipidomicsWiki
Institution | Biological Research Centre Hungarian Academy of Sciences Szeged Centre of Excellence of the European Union | |
Principal investigator | Prof. Dr. Laszlo Vigh
Email:Laszlo Vigh Telephone:+36 62-432048 | |
Country | Hungary | |
Beneficiary Number | P11 | |
About us | BRC is the largest basic research place devoted to life sciences in the country, employs
more than 350 scientists and organised on the concept of interdisciplinarity. The major activities are carried out in 5 institutes and dominated by cellular and molecular approaches. BRC has been selected as a Center of Excellence of the European Union in 2000 and accordingly, operates an International Scientific Advisory Board. The center actively participates in the educational programs of the University of Szeged. Ph.D students from the neighbouring and developing countries can also participate on the International Training Course (ITC) run by BRC staff scientists and financed by UNESCO and UNDP. The Laboratory of Molecular Stress Biology has been founded by Professor Laszlo Vigh in 1987, who is a member of the European Academy of Sciences (2002) at Brussels in the Biomedical Sciences section and of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2004). As a pupil of late Tibor Farkas (NAS) Vigh and his co-workers carried out work to set up a new model whereby thermal stress is transduced into a cellular signal at the level of the membranes. It has also been shown by this lab that the specific and reversible interactions of some amphitropic heat shock proteins (HSPs) with the lipid phase of the dynamic, yet structured membranes act primarily as a tool for rapid regulation of the membrane physical state and thereby preservation of various membrane functions, especially under fluctuating stressed conditions. The “membrane sensor” model first suggested by Vigh and co-workers in 1998 has many important clinical implications as outlined in the present grant application. Within the LMSB there is expertise for all aspects of the research activity proposed, which includes molecular cell biology, lipid and membrane biochemistry and biophysics, lipidomics and molecular biology. A state of the art lipidomics laboratory, a confocal and an ultrasensitive single-molecule tracing molecular microscope, a membrane dynamics laboratory and a fully equipped cell and molecular biology laboratory with excellent human resources are available for the project. The central services of the BRC, including DNA-chip, protein analysis (MALDI-TOF), bioinformatics, DNA synthesis and sequencing and flow cytometry are also available. | |
Contributions | Role in the project: P11 provides double expertise in (i) heat shock proteins and their function in lipid metabolism and (ii) single molecule fluorescent tracing to analyse components of lipid metabolism. P11 will further develop this methodology to study single moelcule behavior on lipid droplets. | |
Member of Taskforces | Task Force I, Task Force II, Task Force VI, and Task Force IX | |
Member of Workpackages | WP2 and WP4 |