CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The generation, sensing and maintenance of membrane curvature is key to many cellular motile processes. A fundamental problem of molecular cell biology in conjunction with physics and mathematics is therefore to understand the evolutionary, developmental and functional rationale for these membrane shapes, as well as the mechanisms used by cells to produce them. Curvature-mediating proteins have been shown to induce specific membrane shapes by direct insertion and nanoscopic scaffolding, while cytoskeletal motors exert forces indirectly through microtubule and actin networks. It remains unclear, whether the direct motorprotein-lipid interactions themselves constitute another fundamental route to remodel the membrane shape. Combining super-resolution-fluorescence microscopy and membrane-reshaping nanoparticles, we report that the curvature-dependent lipid interactions of the molecular motor protein myosin-VI on its own, remarkably remodel the membrane geometry into dynamic spatial patterns on the nano- to micrometer scale. To explain this dynamic membrane sculpting mechanism, we propose a quantitative theoretical model. The discovered motorprotein-lipid interactions open up novel approaches to membrane remodelling and link cytoskeletal motors to early events in the sequence of membrane sculpting in eukaryotic cell biology. Our results challenge and broaden the classical view of the role of motor proteins in membrane sculpting by introducing a completely new function of motor-lipid interaction