Solid-state ¹³C NMR reveals annealing of raft-like membranes containing cholesterol by the intrinsically disordered protein α-Synuclein

Misfolding and aggregation of the intrinsically disordered protein α-Synuclein (αS) in Lewy body plaques are characteristic markers of late-stage Parkinson's disease. It is well established that membrane binding is initiated at the N-terminus of the protein and affects biasing of conformational ensembles of αS. However, little is understood about the effect of αS on the membrane lipid bilayer. One hypothesis is that intrinsically disordered αS alters the structural properties of the membrane, thereby stabilizing the bilayer against fusion. Here, we used two-dimensional (13)C separated local-field NMR to study interaction of the wild-type α-Synuclein (wt-αS) or its N-terminal (1-25) amino acid sequence (N-αS) with a cholesterol-enriched ternary membrane system. This lipid bilayer mimics cellular raft-like domains in the brain that are proposed to be involved in neuronal membrane fusion. The two-dimensional dipolar-recoupling pulse sequence DROSS (dipolar recoupling on-axis with scaling and shape preservation) was implemented to measure isotropic (13)C chemical shifts and (13)C-(1)H residual dipolar couplings under magic-angle spinning. Site-specific changes in NMR chemical shifts and segmental order parameters indicate that both wt-αS and N-αS bind to the membrane interface and change lipid packing within raft-like membranes. Mean-torque modeling of (13)C-(1)H NMR order parameters shows that αS induces a remarkable thinning of the bilayer (≈6Å), accompanied by an increase in phospholipid cross-sectional area (≈10Å(2)). This perturbation is characterized as membrane annealing and entails structural remodeling of the raft-like liquid-ordered phase. We propose this process is implicated in regulation of synaptic membrane fusion that may be altered by aggregation of αS in Parkinson's disease.