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| Anna Skibinsky, Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research, FDA |
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| Anna Skibinsky was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1973 when it was part of the former Soviet Union. She moved to the United States at the age of six and speaks fluent Russian. She earned a B.A. in environmental chemistry from the University of San Diego followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Boston University in the theoretical physics group of Professor H. E. Stanley. Dr. Skibinsky used molecular dynamics simulations to study the existence of a second fluid critical point and the liquid-liquid phase transition, as is thought to exist in water and liquid metals (see Nature 409, 692-695, 2001). Dr. Skibinsky is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the computational biophysics group of Dr. Richard W. Pastor at the Food and Drug Administration. She is using CHARMM (Chemistry at HARvard Macromolecular Mechanics) to study the effect of trehalose on lipid bilayers and monolayers.
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The Search for Trehalose's Function in Lipid Bilayers
Anna Skibinsky, Laboratory of Biophysics, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA, 1401 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD20852-1448, USA
Trehalose is a sugar produced and used by microorganisms to survive dehydration and freezing conditions for decades, even centuries, in a state of suspended animation. It is also remarkably effective in stabilizing dry or frozen biomolecules, cells, and tissue. This is an application of enormous social and economic potential. Recent experimental measurements of pressure-area isotherms of monolayers have shown that trehalose increases the surface area per lipid more effectively than other sugars. This expansion is closely correlated with a sugar's ability to depress the liquid crystal to gel phase transition temperature of dried lipid membranes. Analogous experimental pressure-area measurements on bilayers are not feasible, though it is possible to model such experiments with computer simulations. We consider molecular dynamics simulations of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) lipid bilayers and monolayers at surface areas 45, 54, 64, and 80 square angstroms per lipid both with (1 sugar:2 lipid, 1.3 M) and without trehalose. These 16 systems are simulated in constant area and constant surface tension ensembles to determine the effect of trehalose on pressure-area isotherms and the phase.
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