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- Title
Protein folding in membranes.
- Authors
Fiedler, Sebastian; Broecker, Jana; Keller, Sandro
- Abstract
Separation of cells and organelles by bilayer membranes is a fundamental principle of life. Cellular membranes contain a baffling variety of proteins, which fulfil vital functions as receptors and signal transducers, channels and transporters, motors and anchors. The vast majority of membrane-bound proteins contain bundles of alpha-helical transmembrane domains. Understanding how these proteins adopt their native, biologically active structures in the complex milieu of a membrane is therefore a major challenge in today's life sciences. Here, we review recent progress in the folding, unfolding and refolding of alpha-helical membrane proteins and compare the molecular interactions that stabilise proteins in lipid bilayers. We also provide a critical discussion of a detergent denaturation assay that is increasingly used to determine membrane-protein stability but is not devoid of conceptual difficulties.
- Publication
Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS, 2010, Vol 67, Issue 11, p1779
- ISSN
1420-9071
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00018-010-0259-0