Using supported bilayers to study the spatiotemporal organization of membrane-bound proteins (original) (raw)

2015, Methods in cell biology

Cell division in prokaryotes and eukaryotes is commonly initiated by the well-controlled binding of proteins to the cytoplasmic side of the cell membrane. However, a precise characterization of the spatiotemporal dynamics of membrane-bound proteins is often difficult to achieve in vivo. Here, we present protocols for the use of supported lipid bilayers to rebuild the cytokinetic machineries of cells with greatly different dimensions: the bacterium Escherichia coli and eggs of the vertebrate Xenopus laevis. Combined with total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, these experimental setups allow for precise quantitative analyses of membrane-bound proteins. The protocols described to obtain glass-supported membranes from bacterial and vertebrate lipids can be used as starting points for other reconstitution experiments. We believe that similar biochemical assays will be instrumental to study the biochemistry and biophysics underlying a variety of complex cellular tasks, such as...

Formation of Cell Membrane Component Domains in Artificial Lipid Bilayer

Scientific reports, 2017

The lipid bilayer environment around membrane proteins strongly affects their structure and functions. Here, we aimed to study the fusion of proteoliposomes (PLs) derived from cultured cells with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane and the distribution of the PL components after the fusion. PLs, which were extracted as a crude membrane fraction from Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, formed isolated domains in a supported lipid bilayer (SLB), comprising phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), and cholesterol (Chol), after the fusion. Observation with a fluorescence microscope and an atomic force microscope showed that the membrane fusion occurred selectively at microdomains in the PC + PE + Chol-SLB, and that almost all the components of the PL were retained in the domain. PLs derived from human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK) cells also formed isolated domains in the PC + PE + Chol-SLB, but their fusion kinetics was different from that of the CHO-PLs. We attempted to e...

Correlative microscopy reveals the nanoscale morphology of E. coli-derived supported lipid bilayers

2021

Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) made from reconstituted lipid vesicles are an important tool in molecular biology. A breakthrough in the field has come with the use of vesicles derived from cell membranes to form SLBs. These new supported bilayers, consisting both of natural and synthetic components, provide a physiologically relevant system on which to study protein-protein interactions as well as protein-ligand interactions and other lipid membrane properties. These complex bilayer systems hold promise but have not yet been fully characterised in terms of their composition, ratio of natural to synthetic component and membrane protein content. Here, we describe a method of correlative atomic force (AFM) with structured illumination microscopy (SIM) for the accurate mapping of complex lipid bilayers that consist of a synthetic fraction and a fraction of lipids derived from Escherichia coli outer membrane vesicles (OMVs). We exploit the enhanced resolution and molecular specificity t...

Functional reassembly of membrane proteins in planar lipid bilayers

Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics, 1981

Recent progress in membrane biology has brought us to a stage where it is possible to associate complex biological processes to identifiable membrane proteins. Technical advances in the biochemical characterization and purification of membrane proteins have contributed a wealth of structural information. The reconstitution approach has proved to be valuable in our efforts to understand the molecular mechanisms of membrane transport and energy transduction.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.