Many essential cellular functions rely on the selective uptake or export of specific cargoes across membranes. These vital tasks are performed by specialized, membrane-bound, transport proteins. Transporters of this type are required for the import of nutrients from the surrounding medium, the disposal of toxic products or the defense of pathogens. As in any import-export business, the most important aspect of these transport processes is the selection of the appropriate substrates. LMU biophysicist Professor Thorben Cordes and his team have examined how representative members of an important class of transport proteins called bacterial ABC importers select their preferred cargoes. They identified a wide range of binding mechanisms, which are largely dependent on the fact that one domain of the transporters exhibits a surprising degree of structural flexibility. The new findings appear in the online journal eLife 2019.
LMU press release 16.04.2019