Université de Fribourg

Methyl-branched lipids promote the membrane adsorption of α-synuclein by enhancing shallow lipid-packing defects

Garten, Matthias ; Prévost, Coline ; Cadart, Clotilde ; Gautier, Romain ; Bousset, Luc ; Melki, Ronald ; Bassereau, Patricia ; Vanni, Stefano

In: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2015, vol. 17, no. 24, p. 15589–15597

Alpha-synuclein (AS) is a synaptic protein that is directly involved in Parkinson's disease due to its tendency to form protein aggregates. Since AS aggregation can be dependent on the interactions between the protein and the cell plasma membrane, elucidating the membrane binding properties of AS is of crucial importance to establish the molecular basis of AS aggregation into toxic fibrils....