TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hartel, Andreas J.W.
A1  - Glogger, Marius
A1  - Jones, Nicola G.
A1  - Abuillan, Wasim
A1  - Batram, Christopher
A1  - Hermann, Anne
A1  - Fenz, Susanne F.
A1  - Tanaka, Motomu
A1  - Engstler, Markus
T1  - N-glycosylation enables high lateral mobility of GPI-anchored proteins at a molecular crowding threshold
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - The protein density in biological membranes can be extraordinarily high, but the impact of molecular crowding on the diffusion of membrane proteins has not been studied systematically in a natural system. The diversity of the membrane proteome of most cells may preclude systematic studies. African trypanosomes, however, feature a uniform surface coat that is dominated by a single type of variant surface glycoprotein (VSG). Here we study the density-dependence of the diffusion of different glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored VSG-types on living cells and in artificial membranes. Our results suggest that a specific molecular crowding threshold (MCT) limits diffusion and hence affects protein function. Obstacles in the form of heterologous proteins compromise the diffusion coefficient and the MCT. The trypanosome VSG-coat operates very close to its MCT. Importantly, our experiments show that N-linked glycans act as molecular insulators that reduce retarding intermolecular interactions allowing membrane proteins to function correctly even when densely packed.
KW  - parasitology
KW  - cellular imaging
KW  - membrane biophysics
KW  - single-molecule biophysics
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-171368
VL  - 7
ER  -