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Heptameric structures of two ?-hemolysin mutants imaged with in situ atomic force microscopy

✍ Scribed by Malghani, M.S.; Fang, Ye; Cheley, Stephen; Bayley, Hagan; Yang, Jie


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
289 KB
Volume
44
Category
Article
ISSN
1059-910X

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✦ Synopsis


Atomic force microscopy has been used to study self-assembled structures of two ␣-hemolysin mutants. For a mutant (␣HL-H5) that was locked into the prepore state on fluid phase egg-PC membranes, we visualized, for the first time, heptameric prepores and showed that the 7-fold axis in the prepore lies perpendicular to the membrane surface. For another mutant (TCM) with the transmembrane domain, the self-assembled oligomer that assumes the conformation of the fully assembled pore is also a heptamer. These results show that heptamers are the preferred oligomerization state of ␣-hemolysin.