Membrane Protein Structural Research

Membrane proteins have always fascinated researchers because of their fundamental roles in many key biological processes. Integral membrane proteins are located across the native cell membranes or mitochondrial walls and perform a variety of important functions, including energy production and signal transduction. Mutations or improper folding of these proteins are associated with many known diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, depression, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and many others. It is estimated that more than a quarter of the human genome encodes intact membrane proteins, making it imperative to study the role of these proteins in human health and disease. Nowadays, about 60% of drugs on the market target membrane proteins. Although most commercially available drugs are facilitated through traditional drug discovery techniques, it is the information provided by the atomic structure of the protein that reveals details about the binding mode of the drug. In addition, atomic structures are conducive to a better understanding of protein function and mechanism at the molecular level. Therefore, membrane protein structural information also plays a significant role in many drug discovery projects.

For a long time, due to many technical challenges related to membrane proteins, the number of structures is far less than that of soluble proteins, such as the production of high-level functional eukaryotic membrane proteins by heterologous expression systems, extraction of the target from membranes by using detergents, and the growth of well-ordered crystals for X-ray structure determination. In recent years, many exciting advances have been made in the field of membrane protein structural biology due to technological breakthroughs, especially the development of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. Although membrane protein structures still represent a small fraction of the total number of solved protein structures, an exponential increase in resolved membrane protein structures has been observed and is expected to grow.

ATPaseFigure 1. Membrane protein structural biology techniques. (Choy B C, et al., 2021)

Here, we list some solved structures of transmembrane proteins and monotopic membrane proteins, and you can browse the progress in structural studies of membrane protein families or membrane proteins of interest.

Creative Biostructure is specialized in the field of structural biology, and our years of membrane protein technology expertise support custom production, characterization, and structural analysis of membrane proteins.

Reference

1. Choy B C, et al. A 10-year meta-analysis of membrane protein structural biology: detergents, membrane mimetics, and structure determination techniques. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)-Biomembranes. 2021. 1863(3): 183533.