Stephen G. Sligar
Research Professor
Department of Chemistry
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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ABSTRACT
Membrane proteins are involved in numerous biological processes. Unfortunately, membrane proteins are inherently recalcitrant to study using the normal toolkit for soluble proteins, and one is left with the challenge of finding inhibitors, activators and specific antibodies for important targets. Membrane proteins can be stabilized by a variety of amphipathic molecules and detergents. Particularly useful have been advances in generating nanoscale lipoprotein particles. With the ability to self-assemble integral membrane targets into native-like bilayer structures these approaches have revolutionized the study of structural and functional properties of pharmacologically significant targets such as receptors, transporters, enzymes, and viral antigens. The membrane scaffold protein (MSP) based amphipathic polymers have also proven useful in providing a membrane surface of defined area and composition in order to reveal the structure and function of multi-component protein complexes that operate at the membrane surface. These include the blood coagulation cascade, integrin activation and cancer signaling cascades. In my presentation I will present an overview of MSP-based Nanodiscs and discuss the recruitment, activation and trafficking of the oncoprotein KRas4b to a MSP-based Nanodisc surface of defined composition, efforts to understand the detailed mechanisms of human drug metabolism and steroid biosynthesis as well as progress toward affecting the immune response via control of oligomeric viral antigen assembly. Supported by NIH MIRA GM118145.

BIO
Stephen G. Sligar received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois in 1975. Dr. Sligar served on the faculty in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University and returned to the University of Illinois in 1982 where he was the I. C. Gunsalus Professor of Biochemistry. He now holds the University of Illinois Swanlund Endowed Chair and is Director of the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology. He is also a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry, the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology and the College of Medicine. Dr. Sligar holds affiliate appointments in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Institute for Genomic Biology and The Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory on the Illinois campus. He is a Fellow of the Biophysical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Awards include a Fulbright Research Scholarship, Senior Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, an NIH Merit Award and the Bert L. and Kuggie Vallee Visiting Professorship in Inorganic Chemistry at Oxford where he was a Fellow of Queens College. He is also a Fellow in the Jerome Karle Nobel Laureate World Innovation Foundation. Dr. Sligar's research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Human Frontiers Program. Research centers on understanding the structure and mechanistic function of metalloenzymes, membrane bound receptors and transporters as well as investigations in blood coagulation and amyloid proteins and their corresponding human disease states.

Faculty host: Aditi Das