Peptide pores in lipid bilayers : voltage facilitation pleads for a revised model

We address the problem of antimicrobial peptides that create pores in lipid bilayers, focusing on voltage-temperature dependence of pore opening. Two novel experiments (voltage-clamp with alamethicin as an emblematic representative of these peptides and neutron reflectivity of lipid-monolayer at sol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2013-06
Main Authors: Fadda, G C, Lairez, D, Guennouni, Z, Koutsioubas, A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Electric fields
Electric potential
Lipids
Peptides
Temperature dependence
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We address the problem of antimicrobial peptides that create pores in lipid bilayers, focusing on voltage-temperature dependence of pore opening. Two novel experiments (voltage-clamp with alamethicin as an emblematic representative of these peptides and neutron reflectivity of lipid-monolayer at solid/water interface under electric field) serve to revise the only current theoretical model (H. W. Huang et al.Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 198304 (2004)). We introduce a general contribution of the electric field as being responsible for an unbalanced tension of the two bilayer leaflets and we claim that the main entropy cost of one pore opening is due to the corresponding "excluded-area" for lipid translation.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1301.7579