Proteins embedded in membranes represent an interesting point of communication between the cell and its environment, but their localization to membranes can make them difficult to study. Jones et al. found an approach to catalog thousands of interactions involving membrane proteins and membrane-associated signaling machinery—including many previously uncharacterized proteins. With a focus on the model plant Arabidopsis, several of the identified interactions fill gaps in important signal transduction chains, while others point to functions for enigmatic unknown proteins.
A. M. Jones, Y. Xuan, M. Xu, R.-S. Wang, C.-H. Ho, S. Lalonde, C. H. You, M. I. Sardi, S. A. Parsa, E. Smith-Valle, T. Su, K. A. Frazer, G. Pilot, R. Pratelli, G. Grossmann, B. R. Acharya, H.-C. Hu, C. Engineer, F. Villiers, C. Ju, K. Takeda, Z. Su, Q. Dong, S. M. Assmann, J. Chen, J. M. Kwak, J. I. Schroeder, R. Albert, S. Y. Rhee, W. B. Frommer, Border control—A membrane-linked interactome of Arabidopsis. Science 344, 711–716 (2014). [Abstract] [Full Text]
