CHAPTER 5: Membrane Protein Interactions

Integral membrane proteins support a number of important cellular processes playing a key role in the transport of information and material across cellular membranes. Indeed, miss-regulation or miss-localization of these proteins has been linked to several important disease states. It has become abundantly clear that the activity of these proteins and their localization within the cell critically depends on their interactions with other cellular components, including small molecules destined for translocation across the bilayer or involved in cell signalling, lipids present within the lipid bilayer and other integral and soluble proteins. Accordingly, if we are to understand how integral membrane proteins fulfill these important roles it is vital we understand how they interact with their local cellular environment at the molecular level. Solid-state NMR has emerged as a powerful tool to study how integral membrane proteins interact with other cellular partners, facilitating the study of these interactions at the molecular level. Importantly, as we highlight, these processes can now be studied whilst the protein is resident within the lipid bilayer, which provides unique insights into how interactions between the lipid bilayer and integral membrane proteins can play an important role in regulating vital cellular and disease related processes.