The Daily Bulletin Archive

Ekin Atilla-Gokcumen, assistant professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo, will present her research talk "Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry-Based Approaches to Study the Involvement of Lipids in Biological Processes" on Thursday, March 6, at 12:30 p.m. in Science Building 272. Before her talk, she will meet with Buffalo State students in Science and Math Complex 201 from 9:30 to 10:10 a.m. The abstract of her talk appears below.

This seminar series is sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee, the Vice President for Student Affairs Office, and the Faculty-Student Association.

Abstract
Lipids are a broad class of biomolecules whose primary role is to form the permeability barriers that define cells and compartments within them. Increasingly, they are being recognized as playing a critical role in signaling molecules both within cells and between cells. This seminar will discuss current interests in studying the participation of these molecules in cells’ different decision-making processes, i.e., cell division, death, and senescence. Specifically, we have developed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based profiling approaches to study temporal and spatial regulation of lipid composition throughout cell division. For instance, this approach recently allowed us to investigate global lipid composition of cells as they divide and identify 11 lipids with specific chemical structures accumulating in dividing cells. The current efforts in our lab are directed toward identifying the lipids that change during apoptosis and senescence.