Self-assembly of polymer-encased lipid nanodiscs and membrane protein reconstitution

The absence of detergent and curvature makes nanodiscs to be excellent membrane mimetics. The lack of structural and mechanistic model of polymer-encapsulated lipid-nanodiscs limits their use to study the structure, dynamics and function of membrane proteins. In this study, we parametrized and optimized the coarse-graining (CG) bead-mapping for two differently charged and functionalized copolymers, namely styrene-maleic acid (SMAEA) and polymethacrylate (PMAQA), for the Martini force-field framework and showed nanodisc formation ( View larger version (55K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@ae71c6org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@af961borg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1a7e6c3org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1f4a9a_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG