Intra-helical salt bridge contribution to membrane protein insertion

Salt bridges between negatively (D, E) and positively charged (K, R, H) amino acids play an important role in protein stabilization. This has a more prevalent effect in membrane proteins where polar amino acids are exposed to a very hydrophobic environment. In transmembrane (TM) helices the presence of charged residues can hinder the insertion of the helices into the membrane. This can sometimes be avoided by TM region rearrangements after insertion, but it is also possible that the formation of salt bridges could decrease the cost of membrane integration. However, the presence of intra-helical salt bridges in TM domains and their effect on insertion has not been properly studied yet. In this work, we use an analytical pipeline to study the prevalence of charged pairs of amino acid residues in TM α-helices, which shows that potentially salt-bridge forming pairs are statistically over-represented. We then selected some candidates to experimentally determine the contribution of these electrostatic interactions to the translocon-assisted membrane insertion process. Using bothin vitroandin vivosystems, we confirm the presence of intra-helical salt bridges in TM segments during biogenesis and determined that they contribute between 0.5-0.7 kcal/mol to the apparent free energy of membrane insertion (ΔG_app). Our observations suggest that salt bridge interactions can be stabilized during translocon-mediated insertion and thus could be relevant to consider for the future development of membrane protein prediction software.