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Structure–function insights into direct lipid transfer between membranes by Mmm1–Mdm12 of ERMES
Open accessAbstract
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–mitochondrial encounter structure (ERMES) physically links the membranes of the ER and mitochondria in yeast. Although the ER and mitochondria cooperate to synthesize glycerophospholipids, whether ERMES directly facilitates the lipid exchange between the two organelles remains controversial. Here, we compared the x-ray structures of an ERMES subunit Mdm12 from Kluyveromyces lactis with that of Mdm12 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and found that both Mdm12 proteins possess a hydrophobic pocket for phospholipid binding. However in vitro lipid transfer assays showed that Mdm12 alone or an Mmm1 (another ERMES subunit) fusion protein exhibited only a weak lipid transfer activity between liposomes. In contrast, Mdm12 in a complex with Mmm1 mediated efficient lipid transfer between liposomes. Mutations in Mmm1 or Mdm12 impaired the lipid transfer activities of the Mdm12–Mmm1 complex and furthermore caused defective phosphatidylserine transport from the ER to mitochondrial membranes via ERMES in vitro. Therefore, the Mmm1–Mdm12 complex functions as a minimal unit that mediates lipid transfer between membranes.
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![Figure 6. Mmm1 and Mdm12 mediate PS transport from the ER to mitochondria. (A) A schematic diagram of the PS transfer/conversion pathway involving the ER and mitochondria (MT). The indicated phospholipids were analyzed in this assay. PDME, phosphatidyldimethylethanolamine. (B) In vitro PS transport assays were performed using the HMFs isolated from mmm1Δ cells expressing Vps13-D716H with S. cerevisiae wild-type (WT) or mutant Mmm1 (V190S [190], L274S [274], L369S [369], or L274S/L369S [274/369]) or without Mmm1 derivatives (V). Total phospholipids were extracted and analyzed by TLC and radioimaging. Amounts of PS, PE, and PDME+PC relative to total phospholipids and PDME+PC relative to PE were quantified after 30 min of incubation. Bars show mean ± SE of three independent experiments. The amount of total phospholipids synthesized with wild-type cells after 40-min incubation was set to 100% (total). The amounts of PS/total reflect PS transport from the ER to mitochondria. (C) In vitro PS transport assays were performed using the HMFs isolated from mdm12Δ cells expressing Vps13-D716H with S. cerevisiae wild-type (WT) or mutant Mdm12 (L10S [10], V125S [125], V214S [214], or E255R [255]) or without Mdm12 derivatives (V) as in B. The amounts of PS/total reflect PS transport from the ER to mitochondria. The bars for the mutations at the same positions between the Mmm1 model structure (B) and Mdm12 x-ray structure (C) are indicated with the same colors.](/paper-figures/99a38052e59b4619907d59d4936c6679/structurefunction-insights-into-direct-lipid-transfer-between-membranes-by-figure-6.jpg)

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“Mdm12, Mdm34, and Mmm1 have synaptotagmin-like mitochondrial-lipid-binding protein (SMP) domains [24], and the ERMES complex mediates lipid transport [25,26].”
From In Candida glabrata, ERMES Component GEM1 Controls Mitochondrial Morphology, mtROS, and Drug Efflux Pump Expression, Resulting in Azole Susceptibility (2023) · cites this paper as [25]
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Cites
A SIMPLE METHOD FOR THE ISOLATION AND PURIFICATION OF TOTAL LIPIDES FROM ANIMAL TISSUES
Folch, J., Lees, M., & Stanley, G. H. S. (1957) · Journal of Biological Chemistry · doi:10.1016/s0021-9258(18)64849-5 · Cited by 65,189 · cited 1×
“ScMdm12-bound lipids as well as total lipids were extracted from E. coli cells, without coexpression of Mmm1, using the Folch procedure (Folch et al., 1957).”
MethodComparison of simple potential functions for simulating liquid water
Jorgensen, W. L., Chandrasekhar, J., Madura, J., Impey, R., & Klein, M. (1983) · The Journal of Chemical Physics · doi:10.1063/1.445869 · Cited by 38,397 · cited 2×
“The force fields were AMB ER ff99SB (Hornak et al., 2006), Lipid11 (Skjevik et al., 2012), and TIP3P water model (Jorgensen et al., 1983) for Mdm12, POPC, and explicit water molecules, respectively.”
BackgroundMethod[20] Processing of X-ray diffraction data collected in oscillation mode
Otwinowski, Z., & Minor, W. (1997) · Methods in Enzymology · doi:10.1016/s0076-6879(97)76066-x · Cited by 33,475
Molecular dynamics with coupling to an external bath
Berendsen, H. J. C., Postma, J. P. M., van Gunsteren, W. F., DiNola, A., & Haak, J. R. (1984) · The Journal of Chemical Physics · doi:10.1063/1.448118 · Cited by 31,057 · cited 2×
“Pressure regulation was achieved with isotropic position scaling, a Berendsen barostat (Berendsen et al., 1984) of ∼1 atm, and a pressure relaxation time of 1 ps. Bonds involving hydrogen were constrained using the SHA KE algorithm (Ryckaert et al., 1977).”
MethodFeatures and development of Coot
Emsley, P., Lohkamp, B., Scott, W. G., & Cowtan, K. (2010) · Acta Crystallographica Section D Biological Crystallography · doi:10.1107/s0907444910007493 · Cited by 29,915 · cited 2×
“The structure was refined by refmac5 (Murshudov et al., 2011) and CNS (Brünger et al., 1998), and manual model building was performed by Coot (Emsley et al., 2010).”
Particle mesh Ewald: An N⋅log(N) method for Ewald sums in large systems
Darden, T., York, D., & Pedersen, L. (1993) · The Journal of Chemical Physics · doi:10.1063/1.464397 · Cited by 29,638 · cited 2×
“using particle mesh Ewald method (Darden et al., 1993) to treat long-”
MethodPHENIX : a comprehensive Python-based system for macromolecular structure solution
Adams, P. D., Afonine, P. V., Bunkóczi, G., Chen, V. B., Davis, I. W., Echols, N., Headd, J. J., Hung, L.-W., Kapral, G. J., Grosse-Kunstleve, R. W., et al. (2010) · Acta Crystallographica Section D Biological Crystallography · doi:10.1107/s0907444909052925 · Cited by 23,716 · cited 1×
“The phase problem was solved by an automated software suite (PHE NIX; Adams et al., 2010) using single-wavelength anomalous dispersion data from the crystals of SeMet-labeled HMdm12.”
MethodRyckaert, J.-P., Ciccotti, G., & Berendsen, H. J. C. (1977) · Journal of Computational Physics · doi:10.1016/0021-9991(77)90098-5 · Cited by 21,430 · cited 2×
“Pressure regulation was achieved with isotropic position scaling, a Berendsen barostat (Berendsen et al., 1984) of ∼1 atm, and a pressure relaxation time of 1 ps. Bonds involving hydrogen were constrained using the SHA KE algorithm (Ryckaert et al., 1977).”
MethodPhaser crystallographic software
McCoy, A. J., Grosse-Kunstleve, R. W., Adams, P. D., Winn, M. D., Storoni, L. C., & Read, R. J. (2007) · Journal of Applied Crystallography · doi:10.1107/s0021889807021206 · Cited by 20,612 · cited 1×
“The structures of native or chemically modified proteins were solved by the molecular replacement method using the constructed model from SeMet-labeled HMdm12 as a search model by PHA SER (McCoy et al., 2007) in the CCP4 suite (Collaborative Computational Project, Number 4, 1994).”
MethodThe CCP4 suite: programs for protein crystallography
Number Collaborative Computational Project (1994) · Acta Crystallographica Section D Biological Crystallography · doi:10.1107/s0907444994003112 · Cited by 17,317 · cited 2×
“To monitor lipid transfer between liposomes via the HMmm1s– Mdm12 complex and MBP-HMmm1s, we adopted fluorescent dequenching assays as described previously (Connerth et al., 2012; Watanabe et al., 2015; Miyata et al., 2016).”
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The functional universe of membrane contact sites
Prinz, W. A., Toulmay, A., & Balla, T. (2019) · Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology · doi:10.1038/s41580-019-0180-9 · Cited by 770
Lipid transfer proteins: the lipid commute via shuttles, bridges and tubes
Wong, L. H., Gatta, A. T., & Levine, T. P. (2019) · Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology · doi:10.1038/s41580-018-0071-5 · Cited by 505
Atg2 mediates direct lipid transfer between membranes for autophagosome formation
Osawa, T., Kotani, T., Kawaoka, T., Hirata, E., Suzuki, K., Nakatogawa, H., Ohsumi, Y., & Noda, N. N. (2019) · Nature Structural & Molecular Biology · doi:10.1038/s41594-019-0203-4 · Cited by 456
Deficient Endoplasmic Reticulum-Mitochondrial Phosphatidylserine Transfer Causes Liver Disease
Hernández‐Álvarez, M. I., Sebastián, D., Vives, S., Ivanova, S., Bartoccioni, P., Kakimoto, P. A., Plana, N., Veiga, S. R., Hernandez, V. A., Vasconcelos, N., et al. (2019) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.04.010 · Cited by 407
“Phospholipid extraction was performed as described (Kawano et al., 2018).”
The autophagic membrane tether ATG2A transfers lipids between membranes
Maeda, S., Otomo, C., & Otomo, T. (2019) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.45777 · Cited by 344
“To examine whether ATG2A has such activity, we adapted a lipid extraction assay in which liposomes containing fluorescent lipids (nitrobenzoxadiazole-conjugated PE: NBD-PE) are incubated with proteins, followed by liposome flotation to isolate the lipid-bound proteins (Kawano et al., 2018).”
MethodResultInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Kawano, S., Tamura, Y., Kojima, R., Bala, S., Asai, E., Michel, A. H., Kornmann, B., Riezman, I., Riezman, H., Sakae, Y., Okamoto, Y., & Endo, T.
- Affiliations
- Kyoto Sangyo University (JP)
- Yamagata University (JP)
- Nagoya University (JP)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Institute of Biochemistry, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland 9
- University of Geneva (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Endo, Toshiya
- ORCID
- Venue
- Journal of Cell Biology
- Publisher
- Rockefeller University Press
- Published
- 2017-12-26
- Volume
- 217
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 959-974
- ISSN
- 0021-9525 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-8140
- PMC
- PMC5839780
- OpenAlex
- W2777157902
- Cited by
- 148
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 14
- FWCI
- 8.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Journal of Cell Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Funders
- Japan Society of the Promotion of Science (25840020, 17K18230, 15H05595, 15H05705, 2222703)
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (JPMJCR12M1)
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- National Centre of Competence in Research
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biochemistry › Lipid metabolism and biosynthesis
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Cellular transport and secretion
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Mitochondrial Function and Pathology
- Keywords
- ERMES, lipid transfer, endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria contacts, phosphatidylserine transport, glycerophospholipid biosynthesis, Kluyveromyces lactis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, protein structure, membrane lipid exchange
- MeSH terms
- Biological Transport, Active, Endoplasmic Reticulum, Kluyveromyces, Membrane Proteins, Phospholipids, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Structure-Activity Relationship, Mitochondrial Proteins, Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins, Multiprotein Complexes, Mitochondrial Membranes
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