Fig. 3: Flexibility determines the extent of blade expansion.
From: Direct observation of the conformational states of PIEZO1
a, PIEZO repeat domains of PIEZO1 (left; AlphaFold II E2JF22) and PIEZO2 (right; PDB ID: 6KG7), with tagged positions labelled. b, Inter-PIEZO repeat binding energy for PIEZO1 (blue; AlphaFold II E2JF22) and PIEZO2 (orange; PDB ID: 6KG7) with the contribution of transmembrane domains only (TMDs) or with additional contribution of ordered loops. Tagged repeats are denoted by black arrows. c, Scatter plot of average interblade distances at proximal blade position 670 (17.8 ± 4.2 nm; purple circles; n = 35 molecules and n = 5 cells) compared with distal position 103 (25.1 ± 7.4 nm; grey circles; n = 41 molecules and n = 5 cells) measured with MINFLUX in a cell membrane. Kolmogorov–Smirnov test: ****P = 0.000087 and D = 0.5157. Distances are shown as mean ± s.d. d, Variance and 95% confidence interval of average interblade distances at positions 103 and 670 from the scatter plot data in part c. F-test of equality of variances: P = 0.000535 and F-statistic = 3.10. e, Histograms of GMM fit error for all identified triple-labelled PIEZO1 molecules at position 103 (grey; n = 123 fluorophore positions) and position 670 (purple; n = 105 fluorophore positions). Bin width = 1 nm. Difference in median GMM fit error Δσ x = 0.66 nm, Δσ y = 0.59 nm and Δσ z = 0.69 nm. f, Histograms of interblade angles for identified triple-labelled PIEZO1 molecules binned by 10 nm and fit with a Gaussian at position 103 (56.4 ± 27.8 nm; R2 = 0.84) (top) and position 670 (58.2 ± 18.5 nm; R2 = 0.94) (middle). Values are shown as mean ± s.d. A scatter plot of the change in interblade angles from symmetric (60°) for positions 103 and 670 is also shown (bottom). Mann–Whitney test: **P = 0.0059, U = 5090. Error bars are shown as median and 95% confidence interval. All statistical tests are two-tailed.
