Calorimetric quantification of linked equilibria in cyclodextrin/lipid/detergent mixtures for membrane-protein reconstitution

Reconstitution from detergent micelles into lipid bilayer membranes is a prerequisite for many in vitro studies on purified membrane proteins. Complexation by cyclodextrins offers an efficient and tightly controllable way of removing detergents for membrane-protein reconstitution, since cyclodextrins sequester detergents at defined stoichiometries and with tuneable affinities. To fully exploit the potential advantages of cyclodextrin for membrane-protein reconstitution, we establish a quantitative model for predicting the supramolecular transition from mixed micelles to vesicles during cyclodextrin-mediated detergent extraction. The model is based on a set of linked equilibria among all pseudophases present in the course of the reconstitution process. Various isothermal titration-calorimetric protocols are used for quantifying a detergent's self-association as well as its colloidal and stoichiometric interactions with lipid and cyclodextrin, respectively. The detergent's critical micellar concentration, the phase boundaries in the lipid/detergent phase diagram, and the dissociation constant of the cyclodextrin/detergent complex thus obtained provide all thermodynamic parameters necessary for a quantitative prediction of the transition from micelles to bilayer membranes during cyclodextrin-driven reconstitution. This is exemplified and validated by stepwise complexation of the detergent lauryldimethylamine N-oxide in mixtures with the phospholipid 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine upon titration with 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin, both in the presence and in the absence of the membrane protein Mistic. The calorimetric approach presented herein quantitatively predicts the onset and completion of the reconstitution process, thus obviating cumbersome trial-and-error efforts and facilitating the rational optimisation of reconstitution protocols, and can be adapted to different cyclodextrin/lipid/detergent combinations.