Seminar

Sensing, remodeling, and destroying biological membranes

Prof. Gerhard Hummer

Living cells have developed elaborate machineries to create, shape, and maintain lipid membranes. Conversely, pathogens have developed equally elaborate machineries to attack, invade, and destroy the lipid membranes of their hosts, and to disguise their own membranes from the host defense machineries. We have used molecular simulations and modeling to gain a detailed understanding of the physico-chemical principles underlying key membrane shaping, maintenance, and destruction processes. The focus is on how the intricate shapes of cellular membranes are established, how the physical and chemical state of membranes is probed and regulated, and how bacterial pathogens damage the membranes of their hosts.