Antimicrobial Peptide Mechanisms Studied by Whole-Cell Deuterium NMR

Much of the work probing antimicrobial peptide (AMP) mechanisms has focussed on how these molecules permeabilize lipid bilayers. However, AMPs must also traverse a variety of non-lipid cell envelope components before they reach the lipid bilayer. Additionally, there is a growing list of AMPs with non-lipid targets inside the cell. It is thus useful to extend the biophysical methods that have been traditionally applied to study AMP mechanisms in liposomes to the full bacteria, where the lipids are present along with the full complexity of the rest of the bacterium. This review focusses on what can be learned about AMP mechanisms from solid-state NMR of AMP-treated intact bacteria. It also touches on flow cytometry as a complementary method for measuring permeabilization of bacterial lipid membranes in whole bacteria.

Automated summary

The majority of research on antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) focuses on how they permeabilize lipid bilayers, but AMPs must also pass through non-lipid cell envelope components before reaching the lipid bilayer. There is a growing number of AMPs that target non-lipid structures inside the cell. It is therefore valuable to study AMP mechanisms in intact bacteria using biophysical methods traditionally applied to liposomes.