Rosa Laura Lopez Marques

 

The interest of the group is to understand the mechanisms underlying lipid translocation across biological membranes and vesicle formation along the secretory pathway. Our recent data suggests that these two processes are connected by the action of a family of protein pumps known as P4-ATPases (also called flippases). We currently focus on two parallel research interests: 1) How do P4-ATPases translocate lipids across membranes?; 2) How is lipid translocation regulated in living cells? 3) Are P4-ATPases directly involved in vesicle formation? To unravel these questions we use a broad range of techniques. This include: transient expression in tobacco epidermal cells, bioimaging, molecular cloning and mutant generation and characterization, analysis of protein-protein interactions, and purification of membrane proteins expressed in heterologous systems.