Molecular characterization of Rft1, a membrane protein associated with congenital disorder of glycosylation type 1N

Hirata, E., Sakata, K., Dearden, G.I., Menon, I., Chiduza, G.N., Menon, A.K. (2024) bioRxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.03.587922v1

Phospholipid(s) scrambling along the interface of a VDAC dimer (top, top view; bottom, sideview in the membrane). Snapshots from a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation. The dimer is shown using molecular surface, the headgroups of most lipids are shown as gray beads and their tails as gray tubes, while transiting lipids are highlighted in orange. Most lipids in front of the dimer are not depicted, except for several phosphate groups that are located close to the dimer.

Phospholipids are imported into mitochondria by VDAC, a dimeric beta barrel scramblase

Jahn, H., Bartoš, L., Dearden, G.I., Dittman, J.S., Holthuis, J.C.M., Vácha, R., Menon, A.K. (2023) Nature Communications 14:8115 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43570-y

A cholesterol switch controls phospholipid scrambling by G protein-coupled receptors

Menon, I., Sych, T., Son, Y., Morizumi, T., Lee, J., Ernst, O.P., Khelashvili, G., Sezgin, E., Levitz, J., Menon, A.K. (2023) J. Biol. Chem. https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(24)00025-5/fulltext

Insertases scramble lipids: Molecular simulations of MTCH2

Bartoš, L., Menon, A.K., Vácha, R. (2024) Structure https://www.cell.com/structure/fulltext/S0969-2126(24)00036-4

Credit card mechanism of phospholipid scrambling

Proposed by Pomorski, Menon (2006) to explain how a membrane protein translocates phospholipids (image by Adam Steinberg). Recent work on GPCR and TMEM16 scramblases supports this model.