Semisynthetic lipidated LC3 protein mediates membrane fusion

Abstract

All together: Lipidated LC3 has been synthesized by expressed protein ligation. A TEV-cleavable MBP tag was employed to facilitate ligation under folding conditions and to solubilize the lipidated protein. The synthetic LC3-phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) mediates membrane tethering and fusion at the physiological concentration of PE, and could be a useful tool for autophagy studies.

Keywords: LC3; autophagy; expressed protein ligation; lipidated proteins; membrane fusion; protein synthesis.