Johannes Morstein

Assistant: Aracely Sustaita

We are a chemical biology lab integrating methods of organic chemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology. Some of the techniques that we rely on heavily are synthesis, high throughput screening, lipidomics, proteomics, and confocal imaging. We are excited to use chemistry to make fundamental discoveries in biology and to develop new therapeutic approaches. Projects in the group include:

Lipid Chemical Biology - Mammalian cells consist of over 20,000 unique lipid structures, which makes the lipidome as complex as the human genome (Lipid Maps). At the same time, the study of lipids presents enormous challenges, as we fundamentally lack approaches to precisely edit, screen, or selectively modulate cellular lipidomes. Adding chemical functionality to cells (chemical biology) is a powerful way to study and target areas of biology that are not directly encoded by the genome. We aim to utilize chemical biology to develop new approaches that enable studying and targeting the human lipidome.

Functionalizing Membranes - Lipids define the environment of membrane proteins, and in many cases, specific lipids modulate their function. We aim to develop approaches that will enable the systematic screening of protein-lipid interactions in native cellular environments. We further plan to create tools that allow us to unravel and modulate organizing principles of membranes and membrane protein environments on the nano- and the microscale.

Drug Discovery at Protein-Membrane Interfaces - Over 60% of the druggable proteome are integrated into or associated with membranes (e.g. receptors, transporters, ion channels, kinases). While drug discovery usually considers these proteins in isolation, an increasing number of drugs has been found to exhibit functional interactions with membrane lipids, affect protein access pathways, or extrahelical binding sites. Our lab studies these interactions and seeks to develop new approaches in drug discovery that systematically harness them.