Poster Presentation 49th Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function 2024

Structural and molecular basis of choline uptake into the brain by FLVCR2 (#437)

Rosemary Cater 1 2 , Dibyanti Mukherjee 3 , Eva Gil Iturbe 4 , Satchal Erramilli 5 , Anthony Kossiakoff 5 , Matthias Quick 4 , Thomas Arnold 3 , Filippo Mancia 1
  1. Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
  2. Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QUEENSLAND, Australia
  3. University of California, San Francisco
  4. Columbia University, New York, NEW YORK, United States
  5. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US

Choline is an essential nutrient that the human body needs in vast quantities for cell membrane synthesis, epigenetic modification, and neurotransmission. The brain has a particularly high demand for choline, but how it enters the brain has eluded the field for over fifty years. The MFS transporter FLVCR1 was recently determined to be a choline transporter, and while this protein is not highly expressed at the blood-brain barrier (BBB), its relative FLVCR2 is. Previous studies have shown that mutations in human Flvcr2 cause cerebral vascular abnormalities, hydrocephalus, and embryonic lethality, but the physiological role of FLVCR2 is unknown. Here, we demonstrate both in vivo and in vitro that FLVCR2 is a BBB choline transporter and is responsible for the majority of choline uptake into the brain. We also determine the structures of choline-bound FLVCR2 in the inward- and outward-facing states using cryo-electron microscopy to 2.49 and 2.77 Å resolution, respectively. These results reveal how the brain obtains choline and provide molecular-level insights into how FLVCR2 binds choline in an aromatic cage and mediates its uptake. Our work could provide a novel framework for the targeted delivery of neurotherapeutics into the brain.