Mancia Lab
Principal Investigator: Filippo Mancia
Institution: Columbia University (New York, NY)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
ABSTRACT Lipids are synthesized and modified primarily by integral membrane enzymes embedded, at least in part, in the bilayer itself. These enzymatic reactions are essential not only for the biosynthesis of all cellular membranes, but also for lipid-mediated signaling and for the export of soluble molecules as lipid conjugates to outer cellular compartments for a wide array of basic cellular functions, which include protein and lipid glycosylation, and modifications of the chemical properties of outer membranes. However, despite the advances in our understanding of how membrane proteins function, our knowledge of how membrane enzymes interact with their lipidic substrates at atomic level remains scarce, also hindered by the hydrophobicity of the ligands themselves. The main focus of my lab is to use structural biology – mainly single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) – to investigate at a molecular level the interactions between membrane enzymes and their lipidic substrates. In a structural biology-centered integrated approach, our structures, combined with computational experiments, will produce testable functional hypotheses. We are interested in understanding how hydr…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM132120-08: Structural basis of integral membrane enzyme function (2026)
- 5R01CA275005-04: Molecular Mechanisms of Wnt Transport (2026)
- 5R01AI147628-07: Leveraging PfCRT Structure to Discern Function and Predict Emergence of Drug-Resistant Malaria (2026)
- 5R01EY027405-08: Structural basis of receptor-mediated cellular vitamin A uptake (2026)
- 5R01EY027405-07: Structural basis of receptor-mediated cellular vitamin A uptake (2025)
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