Aug. 5 – A new way of glycolipids production has been discovered thanks to the research led at Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine. The work, led by Antonella De Matteis in Naples, was published by Nature, opening interesting perspectives for all those rare disorders in which these substances are not disposed of properly or accumulate, with serious repercussions on cells and tissues. The work was carried out in collaboration with the Institute of Biochemistry of Proteins at the National Research Council (CNR) and the Naples Ceinge, with important international research centers such as the University of Osaka (Japan), the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (UK) and the Akademi University in Turku (Finland). Glycolipids, fats with a residue of sugar, are important building blocks of cell membranes involved in the development of many genetic diseases; they regulate communication between cells; their center of production is the Golgi apparatus, discovered by Italian physician and Nobel laureate Camillo Golgi, who first described it in 1898. This apparatus consists of a series of flattened tanks stacked on each other, which assembles the proteins and lipids that constitute the cell membranes and “sends” them to their final destination. De Matteis explains, “the Golgi apparatus functions as a sort of assembly line where the tape carries the different components to different tanks, putting them together and getting the finished product: at tank-level, each assembly is a specific modification propaedeutic to the next. In the work published in Nature we demonstrated that, in contrast to what previously thought, there is more than one belt that runs along the Golgi apparatus. In particular, one of these is a preferential lane, because it connects the departure spot directly to the final destination, without intermediate stops: a sort of high-speed train reserved for special glycolipids, controlled by a protein called FAPP2.” In addition to giving an important contribution to basic knowledge on the structure and functioning of cells, the discovery sheds light on a new way of intervention for those conditions in which glycolipids accumulate, with pathological effects on tissues, because they are not properly disposed. “Having discovered this new path suggests a possible new therapeutic target on which to act: rather than act on the genetic defect we can think of slowing down glycolipid production, thus limiting harmful accumulation.”
