Certain proteins have the propensity to bind to negatively curved membranes and generate negative membrane curvature. The mechanism of action of these proteins is much less studied and understood than those that sense and generate positive curvature. In this work, we use implicit membrane modeling to explore the mechanism of an important negative curvature sensing and generating protein: the main ESCRT III subunit Snf7. We find that Snf7 monomers alone can sense negative curvature and that curvature sensitivity increases for dimers and trimers. We have observed spontaneous bending of Snf7 oligomers into circular structures with preferred radius of ~20 nm. The preferred curvature of Snf7 filaments is further confirmed by the simulations of preformed spirals on a cylindrical membrane surface. Snf7 filaments cannot bind with the same interface to flat and curved membranes. We find that even when a filament has the preferred radius, it is always less stable on the flat membrane surface than on the interior cylindrical membrane surface. This provides an additional energy for membrane bending which has not been considered in the spiral spring model. Furthermore, the rings on the cylindrical spirals are bridged together by helix 4 and hence are extra stabilized compared to the spirals on the flat membrane surface.
Keywords: ESCRT III; Snf7; computer simulation; lipid bilayer; membrane curvature sensing and generation.
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