Hopanoid lipid: Difference between revisions

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Lipid, as a major component in all living organism, is understudied. However, in recent year, due to the improvement of lipid study technique, an intense study of lipid helps us increase the understanding of bacterial interaction with other organisms, such as plants. Hopanoids lipid, a model lipid for recent research, is widely found in different bacteria and various lichens and plants. Similar to the eukaryotic sterols, hopanoids are planar, polycyclic hydrocarbons containing five rings compared with the four rings in sterols, and they have a variety of polar and nonpolar side chains. This structural analogy underlies their functional similarities. Both lipid classes modulate the fluidity and permeability of membranes, and they have other subtler biological functions that are beginning to be elucidated.
 
 
 
 
 
 


==Section==
==Section==

Revision as of 02:06, 3 April 2018

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Introduction

By Haofan Li

The selectively permeable bacterial membrane plays a significantly important role in bacterial growth. Among major components of a biomembrane, lipids, though with less variable structure compared to the membrane protein, contributes to bacterial growth, fluidity as well as permeability, resistance towards stressful environments, nitrogen fixation, etc. However, until recent rapid improvement in lipid modification and measurement, many different lipid research becomes quickly evolving microbiology fields.

Hopanoid lipids are one class of well-studied modern lipid model. They are widely found on a large scale of organisms, such as bacteria, plants, and some lichens. However, no hopanoid lipids were found in archaea. Among bacteria, both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria contains hopanoid lipids, potentially indicating the important role they play in bacterial growth and reproduction. Hopanoid lipids are pentacyclic lipids, which connected by four six-carbon rings and a five-carbon ring. With a similar structure as the four-ring eukaryotic sterols, hopanoid lipids also connect rings via sharing a carbon-carbon single bond between two ring structure, forming a stable and constant structure. Additionally, hopanoid lipids contain different hydrophobic and hydrophilic side chains, increasing the hopanoid lipid diversity and thus expanding their multiple purposes of bacteria. [1].

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Electron micrograph of the Ebola Zaire virus. This was the first photo ever taken of the virus, on 10/13/1976. By Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, then at the CDC.


By Haofan Li

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Authored for BIOL 238 Microbiology, taught by Joan Slonczewski, 2017, Kenyon College.