Structural Determinants and Functional Consequences of Protein Association with Membrane Domains

Transmembrane Transcription Regulators Are Widespread in Bacteria and Archaea

To adapt and proliferate, bacteria must sense and respond to the ever-changing environment. Transmembrane transcription regulators (TTRs) are a family of one-component transcription regulators that respond to extracellular information and influence gene expression from the cytoplasmic membrane. How TTRs function to modulate expression of their target genes while localized to the cytoplasmic membrane remains poorly understood. In part, this is due to a lack of knowledge regarding the prevalence of TTRs among prokaryotes. Here, we show that TTRs are highly diverse and prevalent throughout bacteria and archaea. Our work demonstrates that TTRs are more common than previously appreciated and are enriched within specific bacterial and archaeal phyla and that many TTRs have unique transmembrane region properties that can facilitate association with detergent-resistant membranes. IMPORTANCE One-component signal transduction systems are the major class of signal transduction systems among bacteria and are commonly cytoplasmic. TTRs are a group of unique one-component signal transduction systems that influence transcription from the cytoplasmic membrane. TTRs have been implicated in a wide array of biological pathways critical for both pathogens and human commensal organisms but were considered to be rare. Here, we demonstrate that TTRs are in fact highly diverse and broadly distributed in bacteria and archaea. Our findings suggest that transcription factors can access the chromosome and influence transcription from the membrane in both archaea and bacteria. This study challenges thus the commonly held notion that signal transduction systems require a cytoplasmic transcription factor and highlights the importance of the cytoplasmic membrane in directly influencing signal transduction.

Ion channels can be allosterically regulated by membrane domains near a de-mixing critical point

Ion channels are embedded in the plasma membrane, a compositionally diverse two-dimensional liquid that has the potential to exert profound influence on their function. Recent experiments suggest that this membrane is poised close to an Ising critical point, below which cell-derived plasma membrane vesicles phase separate into coexisting liquid phases. Related critical points have long been the focus of study in simplified physical systems, but their potential roles in biological function have been underexplored. Here we apply both exact and stochastic techniques to the lattice Ising model to study several ramifications of proximity to criticality for idealized lattice channels, whose function is coupled through boundary interactions to critical fluctuations of membrane composition. Because of diverging susceptibilities of system properties to thermodynamic parameters near a critical point, such a lattice channel's activity becomes strongly influenced by perturbations that affect the critical temperature of the underlying Ising model. In addition, its kinetics acquire a range of time scales from its surrounding membrane, naturally leading to non-Markovian dynamics. Our model may help to unify existing experimental results relating the effects of small-molecule perturbations on membrane properties and ion channel function. We also suggest ways in which the role of this mechanism in regulating real ion channels and other membrane-bound proteins could be tested in the future.