University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Mechanisms of Membrane Remodeling by Peripheral Proteins and Divalent Cations Zheng Shi University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Biophysics Commons, and the Physical Chemistry Commons Recommended Citation Shi, Zheng, "Mechanisms of Membrane Remodeling by Peripheral Proteins and Divalent Cations" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2011. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2011 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2011 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Mechanisms of Membrane Remodeling by Peripheral Proteins and Divalent Cations Abstract Biological membranes undergo constant shape remodeling involving the formation of highly curved structures. As one of the most extensively studied membrane remodeling events, endocytosis is a ubiquitous eukaryotic membrane budding, vesiculation, and internalization process fulfilling numerous roles including compensation of membrane area increase after bursts of exocytosis. There are multiple independent endocytic pathways which differ by their speed as well as the proteins that are involved in. Bin/Amphiphysin/Rvs (BAR) domain proteins, such as endophilin, are responsible for sensing or generating membrane curvature in multiple endocytic pathways. In this dissertation, I elucidate the mechanisms of membrane remodeling through in vitro experimental studies with synthetic lipid bilayers. Firstly, I investigated the binding and assembly of endophilin on planar membranes. Endophilin was found to be attracted to the membrane through electrostatic forces and to subsequently oligomerize on the membrane with the help of the protein’s N-terminal helices. Next, I studied the mechanisms that govern membrane shape transitions induced by BAR domain proteins.