Influence of organelle geometry on the apparent binding kinetics of peripheral membrane proteins

Information processing in living cells frequently involves an exchange of peripheral membrane proteins between the cytosol and organelle membranes. The typical time scale τ of these association-dissociation cycles is commonly quantified in vivo via fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). Contrary to common assumptions, we show here that τ values determined by FRAP depend on the size and number of target structures. Hence, FRAP times alone are insufficient to draw conclusions about the proteins' binding kinetics. In contrast, extracting primary molecular association and dissociation rates from FRAP approaches provides a size-independent and therefore robust measure for the proteins' binding kinetics. We support our theoretical considerations with experiments on the small GTPase Arf-1 that transiently associates with Golgi membranes: While Arf-1 recovery times in untreated cells and in cells with disrupted microtubules are significantly different, the molecular kinetic rates are shown to be the same in both cases.