Energy landscape underlying spontaneous insertion and folding of an alpha-helical transmembrane protein into a bilayer

Abstract

The detailed folding mechanisms of membrane proteins in their natural bilayer-like environments remains poorly understood due to the lack of tools for measuring stabilities and kinetics. Here, by simulating the folding of GlpG in a bilayer, the authors provide support for the helical-hairpin hypothesis and prompt a re-evaluation of a long-standing paradigm, the two-stage hypothesis.