IDENTIFYING THE PROTEIN INTERACTORS OF CHOLESTEROL IN PHAGOSOMES

Abstract

Phagocytosis is an evolutionarily conserved pathway to degrade foreign pathogens and apoptotic cells. This process is highly driven by the lipid metabolism where cholesterol plays an important role. Although the role of cholesterol in the transport of late phagosomes towards lysosomes are known to an extent, there are still areas on how this is executed and the survival of pathogens inside the phagosome by manipulating cholesterol metabolism that remain as a black box. Hence identifying the proteins involved in the cholesterol interplay in phagosomes would provide a better insight to these areas and uncover new pathways that will be of therapeutic importance. Towards this goal, we standardized a technique to pick up the proteins that interact with cholesterol and found the proteins that are potential interactors of cholesterol in macrophages.