The shapes of cellular membranes are highly diverse. Membrane curvatures range from the flat plasma membrane to highly curved tubules and vesicles. Membrane deformation is accompanied by the redistribution of phospholipids and recruitment of curvature-sensing proteins. To investigate the sorting effects governed by membrane curvatures, we fabricated a system consisting of solid-supported wavy membrane that exhibits a continuous curvature distribution with positive and negative ranges. Curvature-sensing proteins were incubated with the wavy membrane and fluorescence distributions were quantified via confocal fluorescence microscopy. Spatial molecular distributions of ENTH and N-BAR domains were found to vary linearly with the membrane curvatures. In contrast, streptavidin and fluorescent lipids exhibited homogenous distributions. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and single-molecule tracking experiments revealed protein lateral fluidity on the curved regions. Overall, we have demonstrated that the solid-supported wavy membrane can be used as a platform to quantify the curvature sorting of a variety of protein domains.

Curvature sorting of protein domains examined by solid-supported wavy membranes

244th National Meeting (2012)

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