Amphiphilicity is essential for mitochondrial presequence function

We have shown earlier that a mitochondrial presequence peptide can form an amphiphilic helix. However, the importance of amphiphilicity for mitochondrial presequence function became doubtful when an artificial presequence, designed to be non‐amphiphilic, proved to be active as a mitochondrial import...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The EMBO journal 1988-03, Vol.7 (3), p.649-653
Main Authors: Roise, D., Theiler, F., Horvath, S. J., Tomich, J. M., Richards, J. H., Allison, D. S., Schatz, G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Cell physiology
Circular Dichroism
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
In Vitro Techniques
Membrane and intracellular transports
Membrane Lipids - metabolism
Mitochondria - metabolism
Molecular and cellular biology
Molecular Conformation
Peptides - chemical synthesis
Peptides - metabolism
Phospholipids - metabolism
proteins
translocation
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Summary:We have shown earlier that a mitochondrial presequence peptide can form an amphiphilic helix. However, the importance of amphiphilicity for mitochondrial presequence function became doubtful when an artificial presequence, designed to be non‐amphiphilic, proved to be active as a mitochondrial import signal. We now show experimentally that this ‘non‐amphiphilic’ presequence peptide is, in fact, highly amphiphilic as measured by its ability to insert into phospholipid monolayers and to disrupt phospholipid vesicles. This result, and similar tests on three additional artificial presequences (two functionally active and one inactive), revealed that all active presequences were amphiphilic whereas the inactive presequence was non‐amphiphilic. One of the active presequence peptides was non‐helical in solution and in the presence of detergent micelles. We conclude that amphiphilicity is necessary for mitochondrial presequence function whereas a helical structure may not be essential.
ISSN:0261-4189
1460-2075
DOI:10.1002/j.1460-2075.1988.tb02859.x