Structural and Functional Mechanisms of Membrane Proteins: Implications in Health and Disease

The available knowledge of functional mechanisms of transmembrane proteins is typically inferred from experiments that do not reach down to molecular scale. Yet drugs have been developed that modulate or block functional mechanisms to change the states of the cells, of the organs in which they function, and ultimately the organism that depends on this function. Uncovering structural and mechanistic details underlying function of transmembrane proteins are emerging from ever more powerful experimental methods – crystallography, NMR, and rapidly evolving high-resolution microscopy including Cryo-EM. Indeed, the detailed – but mostly frozen – structures they produce are a veritable treasure of information about molecular shapes in mechanistic proposal for how molecular machines may perform their function. “Un-freezing” these systems to understand their mechanisms represents the grand challenge in current biomedicine and biophysics.

Our goal is to showcase structural and functional data and bring forth the mechanistic information on membrane proteins that has been missing for so long. Specific aspects that we would like to highlight include, revealing the important role of allosteric mechanisms governing the function of transmembrane proteins and considering their functional dynamics and organization in the context of the environment in which they reside. These insights have begun to emerge only recently with the development and applicaton of new powerful techniques and approaches, both computational and experimental, to study the structural and functional relationships in membrane proteins. This Research Topic will bring together the latest state-of-the-art research in this important biophysical and biomedical field.

This Research Topic brings together the latest experimental and theoretical findings on membrane proteins, highlighting conceptual advances and lingering gaps of knowledge in mechanistic function and their relationship to health and disease.

We welcome original research, review, mini review, perspective, general commentary, clinical trials, hypothesis, and theory. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the current advances from a number of fields relying on the use, for example, of structural, cell biology, genetics, physiology, behavioral and computational works.