Mikhail V. Bogdanov

Flippability of Escherichia coli membrane proteins under lipid stress reveals a new job for old genes

Normally, the “flip-flop” motion is reserved for small lipid molecules which move from one leaflet of the membrane to the other, and even that process is very slow without the aid of specific enzymes. Unexpectedly, we recently found that despite a prohibitively high energy barrie...