Structural and Mechanistic Insights into Protein Translocation

Many proteins are translocated across the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane in eukaryotes or the plasma membrane in prokaryotes. These proteins use hydrophobic signal sequences or transmembrane (TM) segments to trigger their translocation through the protein-conducting Sec61/SecY channel. Substrates are first directed to the channel by cytosolic targeting factors, which use hydrophobic pockets to bind diverse signal and TM sequences....