Published in

American Chemical Society, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 40(135), p. 15183-15190, 2013

DOI: 10.1021/ja407232b

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Membrane proteins can have high kinetic stability

Journal article published in 2013 by Robert E. Jefferson ORCID, Tracy M. Blois, James U. Bowie
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Approximately 10% of water soluble proteins are considered kinetically stable with unfolding half-lives in the range of weeks to millenia. These proteins only rarely sample the unfolded state and may never unfold on their respective biological timescales. It is still not known whether membrane proteins can be kinetically stable, however. Here we examine the subunit dissociation rate of the trimeric membrane enzyme diacylglycerol kinase from Escherichia coli as a proxy for complete unfolding. We find that dissociation occurs with a half-life of at least several weeks, demonstrating that membrane proteins can remain locked in a folded state for long periods of time. These results reveal that evolution can use kinetic stability to regulate the biological function of membrane proteins, as it can for soluble proteins. Moreover, it appears that the generation of kinetic stability could be a viable target for membrane protein engineering efforts.