Biophysical approaches for exploring lipopeptide-lipid interactions

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIn recent years, lipopeptides (LPs) have attracted a lot of attention in the pharmaceutical industry due to their broad-spectrum of antimicrobial activity against a variety of pathogens and their unique mode of action. This class of compounds has enormous potential for application as an alternative to conventional antibiotics and for pest control. Understanding how LPs work from a structural and biophysical standpoint through investigating their interaction with cell membranes is crucial for the rational design of these biomolecules. Various analytical techniques have been developed for studying intramolecular interactions with high resolution. However, these tools have been barely exploited in lipopeptide-lipid interactions studies. These biophysical approaches would give precise insight on these interactions. Here, we reviewed these state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Knowledge at this level is indispensable for understanding LPs activity and particularly their potential specificity, which is relevant information for safe application. Additionally, the principle of each analytical technique is presented and the information acquired is discussed. The key challenges, such as the selection of the membrane model are also been briefly reviewed.Published by Elsevier B.V. 1.2.

The ecological roles of microbial lipopeptides: Where are we going?

“…One of the challenges in the study of lipopeptides is to understand the process of interaction between the LP and its target [6] . Lipopeptide-membrane interactions have traditionally been studied using experimental strategies such as spectroscopic, diffraction and microscopic methods [162] . However, limitations arise due to the complexity of membranes.…”

Deciphering the role of plant plasma membrane lipids in response to invasion patterns: how could biology and biophysics help?

“…31 P-ssNMR (via chemical shift anisotropy) and 2 H-ssNMR (via quadrupolar splitting) are useful to study the lipid dynamics of liposomes, and more specifically the polar head dynamics and the membrane hydrophobic core order, respectively. Other NMR methods are useful for studying biomolecule insertion and location as well as the structural features of biomolecules inside a lipid environment (see Furlan et al, 2020 andMunusamy et al, 2020).…”

“…The principle is to measure the ratio between the reflected intensity of a neutron beam interacting with the atomic nucleus of the sample and its incident intensity as a function of the momentum transfer, calculated from the angle of incidence and the wavelength of the as sterols. Other membrane models, for example, bicelles and nanodiscs, have been developed to overcome technical limitations specific to some techniques, such as liquid-state NMR (Munusamy et al, 2020).…”

Investigating Membrane‐Mediated Antimicrobial Peptide Interactions with Synchrotron Radiation Far‐Infrared Spectroscopy

“…[7,11,12] Complementary methods have to be applied to gather deeper insights onto these systems. [13,14] Non-invasive optical methods such as circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy or vibrational spectroscopy using infrared radiation (IR) are promising techniques for meeting these goals. In particular, and unlike other methods, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy can provide detailed information on both primary and secondary structure of proteins and polypeptides, [15] as well as their relative orientation in relevant membrane environments (liposomes, [2,16] bilayers [5] ) of various interaction patterns.…”