PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jahn, Helene
AU  - Bartoš, Ladislav
AU  - Dearden, Grace I.
AU  - Dittman, Jeremy S.
AU  - Holthuis, Joost C. M.
AU  - Vácha, Robert
AU  - Menon, Anant K.
TI  - Phospholipids are imported into mitochondria by VDAC, a dimeric beta barrel scramblase
AID  - 10.1101/2022.10.17.512472
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.10.17.512472
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/08/07/2022.10.17.512472.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/08/07/2022.10.17.512472.full
AB  - Mitochondria are double-membrane-bounded organelles that depend critically on phospholipids supplied by the endoplasmic reticulum. These lipids must cross the outer membrane to support mitochondrial function, but how they do this is unclear. We identified the voltage-dependent ion channel (VDAC), an abundant outer membrane protein, as a scramblase-type lipid transporter that catalyzes lipid entry. On reconstitution into membrane vesicles, dimers of human VDAC1 and VDAC2 catalyze rapid transbilayer translocation of phospholipids by a mechanism that is unrelated to their channel activity. Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of VDAC1 reveal that lipid scrambling occurs at a specific dimer interface where polar residues induce large water defects and bilayer thinning. The rate of phospholipid import into yeast mitochondria is an order of magnitude lower in the absence of VDAC homologs, indicating that VDACs provide the main pathway for lipid entry. Thus, VDAC isoforms, members of a superfamily of beta barrel proteins, moonlight as a new class of phospholipid scramblases - distinct from alpha-helical scramblase proteins - that act by an unprecedented mechanism to import lipids into mitochondria.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.