Research in the Sanderson group focuses on the interactions of proteins and peptides with membranes.
Research Areas:
Recent Publications:
"Acyl Transfer from Membrane Lipids to Peptides is a Generic Process",
Robert H. Dods, Burkhard Bechinger, Jackie A. Mosely and John M. Sanderson, J. Mol. Biol., 2013, 425, 4379–4387.
"The Innate Reactivity of a Membrane Associated Peptide Towards Lipids: Acyl Transfer to Melittin Without Enzyme Catalysis",
Robert H. Dods, Jackie A. Mosely and John M. Sanderson, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012, 10, 5371–5378.
"Influence of Lipids on the Interfacial Disposition of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Matrix Protein",
Helen K. McPhee, Jennifer L. Carlisle, Andrew Beeby, Victoria A. Money, Scott M. D. Watson, Robert P. Yeo and John M. Sanderson,
Langmuir, 2011, 27, 304–311.
• Peptide Lipidation
Recent work has established that a chemical process, first seen following the addition of the peptide melittin to lipid membranes,
is widely applicable to other membrane binding peptides. The process involves acyl transfer from the lipid to the peptide and
occurs in the absence of enzyme catalysis. The process leads the development of chemical complexity in peptide-lipid
systems. For example, a mixture of melittin with a binary lipid mixture will evolve from a mixture of three components (peptide + two lipids)
into a mixture with up to twenty potential lipidated melittin products and eight different lyso lipids. The lipidation
process may also help to account for a number of proteins that are found with unusual lipidation patterns in vivo.
To learn more, click here.
The article can be accessed free until 26th March 2014 here.
• EPSRC Programme Grant
Dr Sanderson is a co-investigator on a large collaborative grant awarded by the
EPSRC. The
CAPiTALS programme aims to
engineer the assembly of soft matter, such as lipid membranes, into well defined architectures that exhibit
compositional asymmetry. For membranes this includes the lateral segregation and
bilayer asymmetry in response to factors such as membrane curvature. This molecular membrane engineering approach will
ultimately lead to new biologically-inspired devices and "smart" soft materials.
To learn more, click here.
The Sanderson group is located in the Department of Chemistry and the Biophysical Sciences Institute (BSI) at Durham University. To read more about the BSI, click here.
