Differential staining of crystalline arrays of outer mitochondrial membrane channels
The mitochondrial outer membrane contains pore-forming polypeptides (Mr⋍= 30,000) which are its main protein components in plants and fungi. Outer membranes (OM) isolated from Neurospora mitochondria often contain extended regular arrays of subunits with stain-accumulating centers 2-3 nm in diameter. That these subunits are the mitochondrial channels has been established immunologically. Antibodies against the predominant 31-kDa OM polypeptide of Neurospora (a) prevent in vitro insertion of OM channels into bilayers and (b) preferentially bind to the crystalline membranes in OM fractions.Planar projections of individual OM channel layers have been reconstructed from electron micrographs of negatively stained crystalline vesicles by Fourier filtration. In the usual array (Fig. 1a) the unit cell is a parallelogram which can hold six stain centers (putative pore openings) arranged in a hexagon with p2 symmetry. There are large pore-free areas in these arrays (* in Fig. 1a) which are likely composed of phospholipid, since they disappear when the membranes are treated with phospholipase A2 (Fig. 1b).