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Multimodal Membrane Poration by Thanatin

Hoose, Alex; Garcia-Ruiz, Javier; Blake, Corrin; Lally, Ciara CM; Briones, Andrea; Hoogenboom, Bart W; Lorenz, Christian D; (2025) Multimodal Membrane Poration by Thanatin. Langmuir , 41 (6) pp. 3757-3767. 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c03439.

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Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance has motivated the search for antimicrobial agents with multimodal mechanisms of action. Host defense peptides and bacteriocins hold particular promise in this regard. Among many molecules discovered to date, thanatin appears to represent the properties of the two classes in that it, like bacteriocins, adopts a highly stable fold in solution and, like host defense peptides, exhibits broad-spectrum antibiotic activity. The peptide is believed to depolarize bacterial outer membranes and inhibit lipopolysaccharide transport while restoring bacterial susceptibility to β-lactam antibiotics. However, a direct observation of whether and how thanatin affects membranes is lacking. Here we reason that the peptide should promote bacteriocin-like multimodal poration in phospholipid bilayers. We demonstrate that thanatin induces poration with elements of membrane thinning, fractal ruptures, and transmembrane channels, a phenomenon common for bacteriocin folds but atypical of antimicrobial peptides. The results offer mechanistic insight into the action of antimicrobial agents emerging from different molecular classes but with similar properties.

Type: Article
Title: Multimodal Membrane Poration by Thanatin
Location: United States
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c03439
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c03439
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Keywords: Lipids, Membranes, Molecules, Peptides and proteins, Vesicles
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206050
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