Alexander Phillips

Major: Physics
School of Science

Cholesterol Pushes Vitamin E to the Interface

We would like to investigate how Vitamin E orients itself inside of cell membranes. Specifically we are interested in the preferential location of vitamin E when placed between a saturated phospholipid domain and an unsaturated phospholipid domain. These phospholipid domains are small regions (10-20 nm in size) on a cell membrane comprised of similar lipids. These domains are important as one utility of them is the sending of signals from one cell to another (or in other words it enables communication between cells).

Mentor: Stephen Wassall