Michael Marty

Dr. Michael Marty is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Marty earned his B.A. in chemistry and mathematics at St. Olaf College. He then completed his Ph.D. in chemistry as a Springborn Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with Prof. Stephen Sligar and went on to postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford with Prof. Dame Carol Robinson. He joined the faculty at The University of Arizona in 2016 and moved to The University of Texas in 2025. His research applies lipoprotein nanodiscs with mass spectrometry to study membrane proteins and their interactions with lipid bilayers. 

Membrane proteins play a number of critical biochemical roles and make up the majority of drug targets. Despite their importance, membrane proteins remain challenging systems for analysis due to their amphipathic nature and low expression levels. Moreover, the lipid bilayer can play an important but largely unexplored role in regulating membrane protein structure and function. New analytical and biochemical methods are necessary to better understand and design drugs to target membrane proteins.

Research in the Marty lab is focused on developing mass spectrometry methods to study the structure and biophysics of membrane proteins. Working at the interface of Analytical Chemistry and Biochemistry, we use lipoprotein Nanodiscs to solubilize membrane proteins in a lipid bilayer with a defined composition. Nanodiscs are nanoscale discoidal lipid bilayers encircled by two amphipathic membrane scaffold proteins.

By using nondenaturing nano-electrospray ionization, we can keep the nanodisc complex intact inside the mass spectrometer and gradually release the membrane protein with collisional activation. This approach, known as noncovalent or native mass spectrometry, allows us to measure the stoichiometry and lipid composition in large protein-lipid complexes to better understand protein-lipid interactions in membrane protein receptors and transporters. 

Because mass spectra of nanodiscs are highly complex, we are interested in development of new computational approaches and software for analysis of native MS data. This work builds on UniDec, software we have developed to rapidly and robustly deconvolve mass spectra. 

We are also developing novel lipidomics experiments to measure affinity of lipids to membrane proteins. Here, we use LC-MS/MS to identify and quantify the lipids inside nanodiscs with and without membrane proteins, exploring enrichment of specific lipids in nanodiscs with a given membrane protein target. These experiments take advantage of cutting-edge lipidomics techniques.