On October 27, Prof.Martin Caffrey from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland paid a visit to SIMM and delivered the lecture titled “The many and varied uses of the lipid cubic phase in membrane structural and functional biology research”. Prof. H.Eric Xu, the director of CAS Key Laboratory of Receptor Research, hosted the seminar.

Prof. Martin Caffreypresented the recent achievements from his research group on the mechanism and structure-function studies of membrane.The structure-function relationship was shown in the beginning, and the significance of structure determinationwas highlighted. The in meso method is proving to be a commonly useful approach for membrane protein structure determination. He said this can be extended by protein refolding and also used in other targets such as soluble protein. Accompanying with a second progress of serial femtosecond crystallography, we’ll see a huge leap forward in structural biology of biomacromolecules.

More than 70 people listened to the report and discussed with Prof. Martin Caffrey, including Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies, Shanghai tech university, National Center for Protein Science Shanghai and SIMM.

Now prof. Martin Caffrey has his group in Membrane Structural and Functional Biology,Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His teamaims to establish the molecular bases for biomembrane assembly and stability and to figure out how membranes transform and transmit in health and disease，which has made a breakthrough in application of lipid cubic phase in membrane structural and functional biology research.

（CAS Key Laboratory of Receptor Research）