Tunable Chemical and Optical Control of ER-Plasma Membrane Contact Site Geometry and Dynamics with High-Fidelity Visualization

ABSTRACT

Endoplasmic reticulum-plasma membrane (ER-PM) contact sites are essential signaling hubs that regulate lipid transport, calcium homeostasis, and spatially organized signal transduction. Emerging evidence indicates that not only the presence but also the dynamics, stability, and geometry of ER-PM contacts critically shape cellular functions; however, tools that enable simultaneous high-fidelity visualization and reversible, quantitative control of these contacts in living cells remain limited. Here, we introduce a modular toolkit for inducible ER-PM contact-site reconstitution based on complementary chemical and optical dimerization strategies. We develop a nontoxic and reversible abscisic acid (ABA)-inducible system using the plant-derived ABIcs/PYLcs pair, and a rapidly reversible optogenetic system based on the iLID/SspB module, both of which allow robust visualization and dose-dependent control over contact-site formation kinetics, increasing contact-site density and total area fraction per cell without altering the size of individual contacts. In contrast, systematic variation of rigid α-helical linker length or inducible tether abundance selectively tunes the lateral growth, stability, and lifetime of individual contact sites, without changing their density. By combining these two orthogonal strategies, we achieve independent control of both individual contact-site size and overall contact-site density, providing complementary mechanisms to adjust total contact area per cell. This versatile platform enables quantitative dissection of ER-PM contact site structure-function relationships and offers broad utility in studies of lipid exchange, calcium signaling, membrane repair, metabolic regulation, and disease-relevant dysregulation.