Membrane Protein Folding, Stability, and Protein-Membrane Interactions

Optical tweezers have been widely applied to study folding dynamics of soluble proteins, but not membrane proteins so far. We have been developing novel approaches to measure the folding energy and kinetics of membrane proteins using high-resolution optical tweezers. We are also interested in proteins that help membrane proteins get in and out membranes.

L. Ma, Y. Cai, Y. Li, J. Jiao, Z. Wu, B. O'Shaughnessy, P. De Camilli*, E. Karatekin*, Y. L. Zhang*, Single-molecule force spectroscopy of protein-membrane interactions. Elife 6, e30493 (2017)