ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Conformational analysis of membrane proteins in magnetically oriented bicelles

Abstract: Membrane proteins are notoriously refractive to structural and conformational characterisation. We propose the development of a SANS-based approach for conformational analysis of membrane proteins to obtain their dimensional characteristics independently in-plane and normal to the membrane. As a model system, we trimeric bacteriorhodopsin, embedded within magnetically oriented membrane-mimicking bicellar systems. We propose to produce perdeuterated recombinant bacteriorhodopsin within an E. coli host and reconstitute the purified protein into protonated bicellar systems of DMPC and DHPC. In the presence of lanthanide ions, such proteobicelles will be aligned with bilayer normal along an external magnetic field. We aim to validate the approach and obtain the characteristic dimensions of a typical 7TMD bundle using SANS on ZOOM.

Principal Investigator: Professor Boyan Bonev
Experimenter: Dr WEN JUNG LU
Experimenter: Mr Dominic Ralph
Local Contact: Dr James Doutch
Experimenter: Dr Alice Atkins

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2410226

ISIS Experiment Number: RB2410226

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Boyan Bonev et al; (2025): Conformational analysis of membrane proteins in magnetically oriented bicelles, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2410226

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.