Stabilizing membrane proteins

Membrane proteins can be extremely stable in a bilayer environment, but are often unstable and rapidly lose activity after detergent solubilization. P oor stability can preclude the detailed characterization of many membrane p roteins. One way to alleviate this problem is to find more stable mutants o f a membrane protein of interest. This approach is made tractable by the fi nding that stability-enhancing mutations appear to be relatively common in membrane proteins.