The shapes of cells and many of their internal compartments are dependent on the lipid membranes that surround them. Membranes are viscoelastic structures that can be deformed through interactions with proteins, lipid sorting, and acting internal and external forces to generate a variety of shapes1,2,3,4. These shapes are often described in terms of membrane curvature. Cells use a diverse suite of proteins capable of preferentially assembling onto, or "sensing", particular membrane curvatures to ensure defined spatio-temporal control over processes including cell trafficking, cytokinesis, and migration5,6. The dynamics of cell machinery at the membrane are notably difficult to observe due to the difficulty of balancing time and spatial resolution with cell health. While super-resolution techniques can offer a detailed view of such structures, they require lengthy acquisitions that are not amenable to the timescales of assembly/disassembly for most machinery. Additionally, the molecular complexity of these assemblies in their native environment and the multitude of roles a single component can play make minimal reconstitution systems a valuable tool for studying the functional capacity of molecules.
Minimal membrane mimetics have been developed to study membrane properties and protein-membrane interactions outside of the cell. Membrane mimetics vary from free-standing lipid bilayers, such as liposomes or giant unilamellar vesicles, to supported lipid bilayers (SLBs)7,8,9,10. SLBs are biomimetic membranes anchored to underlying support, typically composed of glass, mica, or silica11,12. A variety of geometries can be used, including planar surfaces, spheres, rods, and even undulating or micropatterned substrates to probe protein-membrane interactions on both concave and convex curvatures simultaneously13,14,15,16,17,18. Bilayer formation begins with vesicle adsorption onto a hydrophilic surface, followed by fusion and rupture to form a continuous bilayer (Figure 1)19. Supported bilayers are particularly amenable to light and electron microscopy, providing both better time and spatial resolution than is often achievable in cells. Curved SLBs especially provide an attractive means to probe protein curvature sensitivity in the absence of significant membrane deformation, allowing one to distinguish between curvature sensing and curvature induction, which are often impossible to separate in free-standing systems.
Septins are a class of filament-forming cytoskeletal proteins well known for their ability to assemble on positively curved membranes6,18,20. Over the course of the cell cycle in yeast, septins assemble into a ring and must rearrange to form the hourglass and double ring structures associated with bud emergence and cytokinesis, respectively21. While beautiful work has been done using platinum replica electron microscopy to observe septin architecture at varying cell cycle stages22, watching septin assembly over time using light microscopy in yeast has met with limited spatial resolution. Previous work on septins using lipid monolayers visualized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was able to reconstitute several interesting septin structures such as rings, bundles, and gauzes23. However, EM techniques are likewise limited in their temporal resolution, unlike fluorescence microscopy. In order to better resolve the kinetic parameters of the multi-scale process of septin assembly, we turned to supported membrane mimetics, where one can carefully control membrane geometry, sample conditions, and imaging modality.
The protocols described here use planar or curved SLBs, purified protein, and a combination of microscopy techniques. Quantitative fluorescence confocal microscopy and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) were used to measure both bulk protein binding onto various membrane curvatures, as well as to measure the binding kinetics of single molecules. Furthermore, this protocol has been adapted to be used with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to examine protein ultrastructure on different membrane curvatures. While the focus of these protocols is on the septin cytoskeleton, the protocols can be easily modified to investigate the curvature sensitivity of any protein the reader finds interesting. Additionally, those working in fields such as endocytosis or vesicular trafficking may find these techniques useful for probing the curvature-dependent assemblies of multi-protein complexes.