RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Unfolding and identification of membrane proteins from native cell membranes
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 732933
DO 10.1101/732933
A1 Galvanetto, Nicola
A1 Maity, Sourav
A1 Ilieva, Nina
A1 Ye, Zhongjie
A1 Laio, Alessandro
A1 Torre, Vincent
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/09/26/732933.abstract
AB Is the mechanical unfolding of proteins just a technological feat applicable only to synthetic preparations or is it applicable to real biological samples? Here, we describe a method providing all the necessary steps to deal with native membranes, from the isolation of the plasma membrane of single cells, to the characterization and identification of the embedded membrane proteins. We combined single-molecule force spectroscopy with an automatic pattern classification of the obtained Force-distance curves, and we provide a Bayesian identification of the unfolded proteins. The Bayesian identification is based on the cross-matching of Mass Spectrometry datasets with proteomic databases (Uniprot, PDB). We applied this method to four cell types where we classified the unfolding of 5-10% of their total content of membrane proteins. The ability to mechanically probe membrane proteins directly in their native membrane enables the phenotyping of different cell types with almost single-cell level of resolution.