A New Concept to Polytopic Membrane Proteins

Abstract

The current prevalent consensus of membrane proteins is that the transmembrane peptide portions have always been regarded as being surrounded by boundary lipids, interacting with hydrophobic surfaces of the peptide portions. It is true for all single-spanning bitopic membrane proteins. For multi-spanning polytopic membrane proteins, however, some transmembrane peptide portions could remain in the membrane lipid bilayer without having to associate with boundary lipids: instead, they art stabilized by the rest of peptide portions of the molecules.