Anisotropic membrane curvature sensing by amphipathic peptides

Many proteins and peptides have an intrinsic capacity to sense and induce membrane curvature, and play crucial roles for organizing and remodelling cell membranes. However, the molecular driving forces behind these processes are not well understood. Here, we describe a new approach to study curvatur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-09
Main Authors: Gómez-Llobregat, Jordi, Elías-Wolff, Federico, Lindén, Martin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cell membranes
Curvature
Detection
Lipids
Membranes
Peptides
Proteins
Tracking
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Many proteins and peptides have an intrinsic capacity to sense and induce membrane curvature, and play crucial roles for organizing and remodelling cell membranes. However, the molecular driving forces behind these processes are not well understood. Here, we describe a new approach to study curvature sensing, by simulating the direction-dependent interactions of single molecules with a buckled lipid bilayer. We analyse three amphipathic antimicrobial peptides, a class of membrane-associated molecules that specifically target and destabilize bacterial membranes, and find qualitatively different sensing characteristics that would be difficult to resolve with other methods. These findings provide new insights into the curvature sensing mechanisms of amphipathic peptides and challenge existing theories of hydrophobic insertion. Our approach is generally applicable to a wide range of curvature sensing molecules, and our results provide strong motivation to develop new experimental methods to track position and orientation of membrane proteins.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1412.2371