The Nanodisc System for Investigating Protein-Lipid Interactions

Nanodiscs provide a useful approach for experimental studies focused on elucidating the structure and function of membrane proteins. The self-assembly process offers an efficient way for optimizing the composition and stoichiometry of the lipid mixture, scaffold protein, and the target membrane protein, resulting in soluble lipoprotein particles with a highly homogeneous size distribution. As a result, this system is now commonly used for many biophysical and biochemical applications, resulting in hundreds of new publications every year. In this review, we give an overview of some of the recent results that describe various aspects of lipid-protein interactions being investigated using the Nanodisc system, focusing on the novel methods and presenting some of the advantages of this methodology.