Special issue: Membrane proteins-at the forefront of biophysical research EBSA Satellite meeting: Structure, Function, Folding and Assembly of Membrane Proteins-Insight from Biophysics, Tata, Hungary, August 2011

摘要

Membrane proteins represent very important, complex and challenging research objects. They play essential roles in all life processes of the cellular world, e.g., energisation, transport, catalysis, cellular sensing, communication and mechanics. The host lipid matrix presents an amphiphilic environment for both integral and peripheral membrane proteins. On the one hand, this reduces the conformational space of membrane proteins. On the other hand, the amphiphilic nature of membrane proteins makes them extremely challenging to study outside their native lipid environment. A glance at the sharp contrast between the high abundance of membrane proteins in known genomes and their very limited representation in the protein structure database gives a good sense of the challenges involved. Biophysical approaches to membrane proteins address their purification, reconstitution, prediction and experimental determination of their structure, function, dynamics and folding, physical and molecular modelling, as well as their interactions with each other and the host environment.