The group

This Group was formed based on the following idea:

Membrane proteins play an essential role in cell physiology, controlling solute or information exchange with the environment. They carry out most of the cell energy conversion (respiratory and photosynthesis), they conduct ion efflux through the membrane allowing action potentials and muscle contraction, they allow metabolites incorporation and waste excretion, they receive hormonal signals or protect the organism against chemical attacks… Membrane proteins make up for 30% of genomes and 60% of drug targets and are therefore major research topics.

To study membrane proteins function, available approaches cover several orders of magnitude, ranging from cellular or physiological levels to molecular investigations, and require expert knowledge. Membrane proteins are intrinsically fragile, unabundant and unstable, requiring expert skills to handle them. This has on many levels slowed down their structural studies. It is precisely at the structural level that a major game changer occurred with technical development that benefitted Cryo-EM and that opened the possibility to obtain atomic resolution. This technological jump changes everything in Membrane Proteins investigations. With the release of these experimental locks, there is an increase of our understanding of the molecular motions and flexibilities required for their function, as well as an opening to study new targets. The increase of structural data is going to shed more light on biochemical, cellular and physiological functions of these proteins, and is going to open up questions encompassing several levels of study. The back-and-forth movement between biochemical and cellular information is to become the new norm, and the understanding of global phenomena will inevitably occur through an integrative approach, englobing multi-scale of analysis, which is now accessible.

In order to answer the challenges of this integrative study we propose to gather the most expert opinions on each topic of Membrane Proteins studies. The objective of this group is to favor exchanges between laboratories with the goal to elaborate together a new panorama of possibilities offered by our field in a full (r)evolution and to establish fruitful collaborations for technological developments and foster new applications.

APPICOM is constituted of 91 research teams, in 49 research Institutes in France and Abroad. Find bellow the geographic and topic distributions.