Lipid membrane reshaping is critical to many common cellular processes, including cargo trafficking, cell motility, and organelle biogenesis. The Rodal lab studies how dynamic membrane remodeling is achieved by the active interplay between lipids and proteins. Recent results, published in Cell Reports, demonstrate that for the membrane remodeling protein Nervous Wreck (Nwk), intramolecular autoregulation and membrane charge work together in surprising ways to restrict remodeling to a limited range of lipid compositions.
F-BAR (Fes/Cip4 homology Bin/Amphiphysin/Rvs) domain family proteins are important mediators of membrane remodeling events. The F-BAR domain forms a crescent-shaped α-helical dimer that interacts with and deforms negatively charged membrane phospholipids by assembling into higher-order scaffolds. In this paper, Kelley et al. have shown that the neuronal F-BAR protein Nwk is autoregulated by its C-terminal SH3 domains, which interact directly with the F-BAR domain to inhibit membrane binding. Until now, the dogma in the field has been that increasing concentrations of negatively charged lipids would increase Nwk membrane binding, and thus would induce membrane deformation.
Surprisingly, Kelley et al. found that autoregulation does not mediate this kind of simple “on-off” switch for membrane remodeling. Instead, increasing the concentration of negatively charged lipids increases membrane binding, but inhibits F-BAR membrane deforming activities (see below). Using a combination of in vitro assays and single particle electron microscopy, they found that the Nwk F-BAR domain efficiently assembles into higher-order structures and deforms membranes only within “sweet spot” of negative membrane charge, and that autoregulation elevates this range. The implication of this work is that autoregulation could either reduce membrane binding or promote higher-order assembly, depending on local cellular membrane composition. This study suggests a significant role for the regulation of membrane composition in remodeling.
Brandeis authors on the study included Molecular and Cell Biology graduate students Charlotte Kelley and Shiyu Wang, staff member Tania Eskin, and undergraduate Emily Messelaar ’13 from the Rodal lab; postdoctoral fellow Kangkang Song, Associate Professor of Biology Daniela Nicastro (currently at UT Southwestern), and Associate Professor of Physics Michael Hagan.
Kelley CF, Messelaar EM, Eskin TL, Wang S, Song K, Vishnia K, Becalska AN, Shupliakov O, Hagan MF, Danino D, Sokolova OS, Nicastro D, Rodal AA. Membrane Charge Directs the Outcome of F-BAR Domain Lipid Binding and Autoregulation. Cell reports. 2015;13(11):2597-609.
