The Synergetic Effects of Combining Structural Biology and EPR Spectroscopy on Membrane Proteins

Abstract

Protein structures as provided by structural biology such as X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy and NMR spectroscopy are key elements to understand the function of a protein on the molecular level. Nonetheless, they might be error-prone due to crystallization artifacts or, in particular in case of membrane-imbedded proteins, a mostly artificial environment. In this review, we will introduce different EPR spectroscopy methods as powerful tools to complement and validate structural data gaining insights in the dynamics of proteins and protein complexes such that functional cycles can be derived. We will highlight the use of EPR spectroscopy on membrane-embedded proteins and protein complexes ranging from receptors to secondary active transporters as structural information is still limited in this field and the lipid environment is a particular challenge.

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance as a Tool for Studying Membrane Proteins

“…In the following sections, we will discuss it in an introductory fashion with recent examples. For more in-depth information, we refer the following excellent reviews [12,13,42,47,50,[54][55][56][57][58]. extended the application of EPR spectroscopy to nearly any biological system.…”

Probing Structural Dynamics of Membrane Proteins Using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Techniques

“…Distance measurements obtained by using double SDSL EPR spectroscopy is very popular and a rapidly growing structural biology technique to probe secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures of bio-macromolecules [41,72,[88][89][90]. Distances and distance distribution can be also utilized to obtain conformational rearrangements or complex formation of membrane proteins.…”

“…In the following sections, we will discuss this topic in an introductory manner with emerging examples to answer pertinent structural dynamics related questions on membrane proteins. We refer the following excellent reviews for detail information [5,6,41,61,66,72,90,122].…”