Figure 1.

Assembly of the spinach ATP synthase rotor ring protein-lipid complex. (A) Structure of the spinach ATP synthase (Hahn et al., 2018). The rotor ring is highlighted in green and the approximate membrane boundaries are shown with black lines. (B) The rotor ring assembly approach. c₇ oligomers are separated by 5 nm and pulled toward the experimentally determined positions using harmonic restraints. (C) Assembled c₁₄ ring. (D) Convergence of the c₇ oligomers during pulling simulations. Yellow and magenta traces converge to 3 Å; the green simulation is trapped in a high-RMSD conformation (4.6 Å); the blue simulation doesn't converge in 1,500 ns. (E) RMSD of C_α positions in unrestrained atomistic simulation of the assembled c-ring with 17 lipids inside relative to the starting experimental structure (PDB ID 6FKF).