Sensing membrane thickness: Lessons learned from cold stress

SAITA E; ALBANESI D; DE MENDOZA, D.

BIOCHIMICA ET BIOPHYSICA ACTA-MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY OF LIPIDS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016

1388-1981

The lipid bilayer component of biological membranes is important for the distribution,organization, and function of bilayer spanning proteins. These physical barriers aresubjected to bilayer perturbations. As a consequence, nature has evolved proteins thatare able to sense changes in the bilayer properties and transform these lipid-mediatedstimuli into intracellular signals. A structural feature that most signal transducingmembrane embedded proteins have in common is one or more alfa-helices that traversethe lipid bilayer. Because of the interaction with the surrounding lipids, the organizationof these transmembrane helices will be sensitive to membrane properties, likehydrophobic thickness. The helices may adapt to the lipids in different ways, which inturn can influence the structure and function of the intact membrane proteins. Wereview recent insights into the molecular basis of thermosensing via changes inmembrane thickness and consider examples in which the hydrophobic matching can bedemonstrated using reconstituted membrane systems.