The structure of the pore formed by pore-forming colicins in bacterial cell membranes remains a mystery. It is believed that the protein contributes to the pore four transmembrane segments and some studies suggest that the pore can be formed by as few as three transmembrane segments. However, this seems difficult to conciliate with the lumen diameter, believed to be as large as 8-9 �. Therefore, it has been proposed that lipids make a significant contribution to the pore structure in a possible toroidal pore. In this work, we are using an extended version of the IMM1 implicit model for anionic membranes to test different hypotheses for the pore structure. Using the experimental results obtained for Colicin Ia as a starting point, we are constructing different models and studying their stability, both in cylindrical and toroidal pores.

Computational modeling of a colicin pore

244th National Meeting (2012)

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