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A conserved endoplasmic reticulum membrane protein complex (EMC) facilitates phospholipid transfer from the ER to mitochondria.

PLoS biology | 2014

Mitochondrial membrane biogenesis and lipid metabolism require phospholipid transfer from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to mitochondria. Transfer is thought to occur at regions of close contact of these organelles and to be nonvesicular, but the mechanism is not known. Here we used a novel genetic screen in S. cerevisiae to identify mutants with defects in lipid exchange between the ER and mitochondria. We show that a strain missing multiple components of the conserved ER membrane protein complex (EMC) has decreased phosphatidylserine (PS) transfer from the ER to mitochondria. Mitochondria from this strain have significantly reduced levels of PS and its derivative phosphatidylethanolamine (PE). Cells lacking EMC proteins and the ER-mitochondria tethering complex called ERMES (the ER-mitochondria encounter structure) are inviable, suggesting that the EMC also functions as a tether. These defects are corrected by expression of an engineered ER-mitochondrial tethering protein that artificially tethers the ER to mitochondria. EMC mutants have a significant reduction in the amount of ER tethered to mitochondria even though ERMES remained intact in these mutants, suggesting that the EMC performs an additional tethering function to ERMES. We find that all Emc proteins interact with the mitochondrial translocase of the outer membrane (TOM) complex protein Tom5 and this interaction is important for PS transfer and cell growth, suggesting that the EMC forms a tether by associating with the TOM complex. Together, our findings support that the EMC tethers ER to mitochondria, which is required for phospholipid synthesis and cell growth.

Pubmed ID: 25313861 RIS Download

Research resources used in this publication

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Antibodies used in this publication

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Associated grants

  • Agency: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canada
  • Agency: Intramural NIH HHS, United States

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RRID:SCR_003032

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RRID:SCR_006952

FunSpec is a web-based tool for statistical evaluation of groups of genes and proteins (e.g. co-regulated genes, protein complexes, genetic interactors) with respect to existing annotations, including GO terms. FunSpec (an acronym for Functional Specification) inputs a list of yeast gene names, and outputs a summary of functional classes, cellular localizations, protein complexes, etc. that are enriched in the list. The classes and categories evaluated were downloaded from the MIPS Database and the GO Database . In addition, many published datasets have been compiled to evaluate enrichment against. Hypertext links to the publications are given. The p-values, calculated using the hypergeometric distribution, represent the probability that the intersection of given list with any given functional category occurs by chance. The Bonferroni-correction divides the p-value threshold, that would be deemed significant for an individual test, by the number of tests conducted and thus accounts for spurious significance due to multiple testing over the categories of a database. After the Bonferroni correction, only those categories are displayed for which the chance probability of enrichment is lower than: p-value/#CD where #CD is the number of categories in the selected database. Without the Bonferroni Correction, all categories are displayed for which the same probability of enrichment is lower than: p-value threshold in an individual test Note that many genes are contained in many categories, especially in the MIPS database (which are hierarchical) and that this can create biases for which FunSpec currently makes no compensation. Also the databases are treated as independent from one another, which is really not the case, and each is searched seperately, which may not be optimal for statistical calculations. Nonetheless, we find it useful for sifting through the results of clustering analysis, TAP pulldowns, etc. Platform: Online tool

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