Back

Programmed inhibition of an innate immune receptor via de novo designed transmembrane proteins

Maillie, C. A.; Zhang, M.; Goiset, N.; Goldenfeld, G.; Ward, A. B.; Mravic, M.

2025-07-18 biochemistry
10.1101/2025.05.31.657109 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Transmembrane domains of immune complexes transmit precise signals across lipid bilayers. Probing their interactions has the potential to yield mechanistic insights relevant to therapeutic design. However, our capability to generate molecules directed to bind lipid-embedded sites is limited. Here, we demonstrate a computational strategy to design polypeptides targeting Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), a mediator of inflammatory signaling, directly within membranes. TLR4 poses a formidable molecular recognition challenge, as its transmembrane domain is largely apolar, lacks a defined sequence motif, and exhibits an underdetermined structure-function relationship. One synthetic protein binds TLR4s transmembrane domain and antagonizes NF{kappa}B signaling in human cells, proving that precise transmembrane domain interactions are essential for cross-membrane conformational coupling. This work refines design principles for encoding stable interactions in cellular membranes and expands the range of lipid-embedded mechanisms accessible to probe with computationally derived molecules.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.