Membranes are hydrophobic barriers that define the outer boundaries and internal compartments of living cells. Membrane proteins are the gates in these barriers, and they perform vital functions in the highly regulated transport of matter and information across membranes. Membrane proteins destined for the endoplasmic reticulum are targeted either co- or post-translationally to the Sec61 translocon, the major translocation machinery in eukaryotic cells, which allows for lateral partitioning of hydrophobic segments into the lipid bilayer. This thesis aims to acquire insights into the mechanism of membrane protein insertion and the role of different translocon components in targeting, insertion and topogenesis, using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism.

By measuring the insertion efficiency of a set of model proteins, we studied the sequence requirements for Sec61-mediated insertion of an α-helical transmembrane segment and established a ‘biological hydrophobicity scale’ in yeast, which describes the individual contributions of the 20 amino acids to insertion. Systematic mutagenesis and photo-crosslinking of the Sec61 translocon revealed key residues in the lateral gate that modulate the threshold hydrophobicity for membrane insertion and transmembrane segment orientation. Further, my studies demonstrate that the translocon-associated Sec62 is important not only for post-translational targeting, but also for the insertion and topogenesis of moderately hydrophobic signal anchor proteins and the C-terminal translocation of multi-spanning membrane proteins. Finally, nuclearly encoded mitochondrial membrane proteins were found to evade mis-targeting to the endoplasmic reticulum by containing short C-terminal tails.