Imperial College London
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ProfessorRobertEndres

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences

Professor of Systems Biology
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 9537r.endres Website

 
 
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Location

 

315Sir Ernst Chain BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Eismann:2015:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004650,
author = {Eismann, S and Endres, RG},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004650},
journal = {PLOS Computational Biology},
title = {Protein connectivity in chemotaxis receptor complexes},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004650},
volume = {11},
year = {2015}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The chemotaxis sensory system allows bacteria such as Escherichia coli to swim towards nutrients and away from repellents. The underlying pathway is remarkably sensitive in detecting chemical gradients over a wide range of ambient concentrations. Interactions among receptors, which are predominantly clustered at the cell poles, are crucial to this sensitivity. Although it has been suggested that the kinase CheA and the adapter protein CheW are integral for receptor connectivity, the exact coupling mechanism remains unclear. Here, we present a statistical-mechanics approach to model the receptor linkage mechanism itself, building on nanodisc and electron cryotomography experiments. Specifically, we investigate how the sensing behavior of mixed receptor clusters is affected by variations in the expression levels of CheA and CheW at a constant receptor density in the membrane. Our model compares favorably with dose-response curves from in vivo Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) measurements, demonstrating that the receptor-methylation level has only minor effects on receptor cooperativity. Importantly, our model provides an explanation for the non-intuitive conclusion that the receptor cooperativity decreases with increasing levels of CheA, a core signaling protein associated with the receptors, whereas the receptor cooperativity increases with increasing levels of CheW, a key adapter protein. Finally, we propose an evolutionary advantage as explanation for the recently suggested CheW-only linker structures.
AU  - Eismann,S
AU  - Endres,RG
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004650
PY  - 2015///
SN  - 1553-734X
TI  - Protein connectivity in chemotaxis receptor complexes
T2  - PLOS Computational Biology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004650
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/28372
VL  - 11
ER  -
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