The assembly of membrane proteins into complexes

Protein complexes are a fundamental aspect of life in a membrane. It is therefore important to understand which proteins are assembled, and how the process of assembly is coordinated. To this end, a number of themes have emerged from the literature in recent years: first, membrane proteins assemble in an ordered, rather than a stochastic manner; second, they require chaperones to prevent unwanted interactions/aggregation; and third, they can be assembled into existing complexes. As these recurrent themes have emerged from studies on disparate complexes, they provide a general framework to understand the assembly of membrane proteins.