The Analytical and Surface Chemistry program in the Division of Chemistry will support the research program of Prof Quan Cheng of the University of California at Riverside. Prof. Cheng and his students will develop novel lipid microarrays and combine them with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) imaging microscopy to investigate lipid-protein interactions in a real-time and label-free fashion. Current methods for the study of lipid-protein interactions are limited in their ability to capture lipid components in a membrane environment. Most methods are not capable of high throughput analysis. This has become a bottleneck in the profiling of lipid-protein interactions. To fabricate lipid microarrays Prof. Cheng and his students will coat gold surfaces, commonly used for SPR imaging, with ultra thin silica coatings. The study will focus on the fabrication of microarray templates with lithographic approaches and calcinated SPR chips, fabrication of robust, artificial membrane microarrays with fluid nature that provide true membrane environment for hosting lipid receptors, and investigation of phosphoinositide-protein interactions with lipid microarray/SPR technique. Since the interactions between proteins and phosphoinositides are essential to the regulation of nuclear functions and membrane trafficking, the work will provide new tools and thus facilitate research in the areas of cancer and type II diabetes. The high-throughput capability of the proposed system will also offer excellent opportunities for the screening of interaction partners that are of therapeutic significance. The project will provide excellent training opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students in a cutting edge highly multidisciplinary area of research.
