TITLE:

Lipase: An Enzyme at Sea-Spray Aerosol Particle Surfaces?

DATE:

Friday, February 2nd, 2018

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS-314

SPEAKER:

Dr. Jamie Schiffer, postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego.

ABSTRACT:

Sea-spray aerosols (SSA) represent one of the most abundant aerosols
within our atmosphere, and yet the current uncertainties associated
with SSA impacts on total radiative forcing are much larger than those
for greenhouse gases. Recently, it has been shown that triacylglycerol
lipases, hydrolytic enzymes that breakdown lipids into fatty acids,
are present and active within SSA. These enzymes are highly amphiphillic
and thus likely to partition to air-liquid surfaces. If lipase is present
at the SSA surface, then lipase could participate in critical chemical
pathways within SSA, essentially guiding the climate relevant properties
of these aerosols. However, the degree to which lipases partition to
air-liquid surfaces as a function of surface lipid composition, pH and
surface pressure, all surface characteristics which vary between SSA
particles, remains elusive. Moreover, the atomic-level structures of
lipases at these surfaces, which could inform on how lipases alter SSA
chemical pathways, are unknown. To uncover if lipase is present at SSA
surfaces and determine the structure of lipase at these surfaces,
surface adsorption isotherms of lipase injected into Langmuir monolayers
of lipids were interpreted in the context of microseconds of all-atom
molecular dynamics simulations of lipase imbedded in SSA-relevant surfaces.
At this talk, the findings from this collaborative study will be presented
and multiscale models for future study will be considered for studying
lipase at SSA surfaces. .

HOST:

Dr. Andrew Cooksy

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