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Turmeric Ingredient Makes Cell Membranes Behave
For Better Health
ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — Revered in India as "holy powder," the
marigold-colored spice known as turmeric has been used for
centuries to
treat wounds, infections and other health problems. In recent years,
research into the healing powers of turmeric's main
ingredient, curcumin,
has burgeoned, as its astonishing array of antioxidant, anti-cancer,
antibiotic, antiviral and other properties has been
revealed.
Yet
little has been known about exactly how curcumin works inside the body.
Now,
University of Michigan researchers led by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy have
discovered that curcumin acts as a disciplinarian, inserting
itself into
cell membranes and making them more orderly, a move that improves cells'
resistance to infection and malignancy.
"The
membrane goes from being crazy and floppy to being more disciplined and
ordered, so that information flow through it can be
controlled," said Ramamoorthy, a professor of chemistry and biophysics. The findings were
published online March 3 in the Journal of the
American Chemical Society.
The
research project melds Ramamoorthy's past with his current scientific
interests. As a child in India, he was given turmeric-laced milk to
drink
when he had a cold, and he breathed steam infused with turmeric to relieve
congestion. Now as researcher he is fascinated with
proteins that are
associated with biological membranes, and he uses a technique called
solid-state NMR spectroscopy to reveal atom-level
details of these important molecules and the membranous milieu in which
they operate.
"Probing high-resolution intermolecular interactions in the messy membrane
environment has been a major challenge to commonly-used
biophysical
techniques," Ramamoorthy said. His research group recently developed the
two-dimensional solid-state NMR technique that
they used to probe curcumin-membrane
communication in this study.
Scientists have speculated that curcumin does its health-promoting work by
interacting directly with membrane proteins, but the U-M
findings challenge
that notion. Instead, the researchers found that curcumin regulates the
action of membrane proteins indirectly, by changing
the physical properties
of the membrane.
Ramamoorthy's group now is collaborating with chemistry professor Masato
Koreeda and U-M Life Sciences Institute researcher Jason
Gestwicki to study
a variety of curcumin derivatives, some of which have enhanced potency. "We
want to see how these various
derivatives interact with the membrane, to see
if the interactions are the same as what we have observed in the current
study,"
Ramamoorthy said. "Such a comparative study could lead to the
development of potent compounds to treat infection and other diseases."
In a
related line of research, Ramamoorthy's team is using the same methods to
investigate the effects of curcumin on the formation of
amyloids---clumps of
fibrous protein believed to be involved in type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's
disease, Parkinson's disease, and many other
maladies. In addition, the
researchers are looking to see whether other natural products, such as polyphenols (compounds found in many
plant foods that are known to have
antioxidant properties) and capsaicin (a pain reliever derived from hot
peppers), interact with
membranes in the same way as curcumin.
Along
with Ramamoorthy, the paper's authors are undergraduates Jeffrey Barry and
Michelle Fritz, post-doctoral fellow Jeffrey Brender,
graduate student
Pieter Smith and a visiting professor from South Korea, Dong-Kuk Lee.
This
research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Adapted from materials provided by
University of Michigan, via
EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
University of Michigan (2009,
March 8). Turmeric Ingredient Makes Membranes
Behave For Better Health. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 12, 2009,
from
http://www.sciencedaily.com
/releases/2009/03/090306172615.htm
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