Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
Volume 19, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/ijms19041186
Keywords
LL-37; molecular dynamics simulations; model membranes
Funding
- Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China [ZR2014AL014, ZR2016CQ15]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31670727, 61671107, 61271378]
- Taishan Scholars Program of Shandong province of China [Tshw201502045]
- National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [1059775, 1083450]
- Australia Research Council [DP180102060]
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Cathelicidins are a large family of cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) found in mammals with broad spectrum antimicrobial activity. LL-37 is the sole amphipathic alpha-helical AMP from human Cathelicidins family. In addition to its bactericidal capability, LL-37 has antiviral, anti-tumor, and immunoregulatory activity. Despite many experimental studies, its molecular mechanism of action is not yet fully understood. Here, we performed three independent molecular dynamics simulations (600 ns or more) of a LL-37 peptide in the presence of 256 lipid bilayers with 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoglycerol (POPG) mimicking bacterial and 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) mimicking mammalian membranes. We found that LL-37 can be quickly absorbed onto the POPG bilayer without loss of its helical conformation in the core region and with the helix lying in parallel to the bilayer. The POPG bilayer was deformed. In contrast, LL-37 is slower in reaching the POPC surface and loss much of its helical conformation during the interaction with the bilayer. LL-37 only partially entered the POPC bilayer without significant deformation of the membrane. The observed difference for different bilayers is largely due to the fact that LL-37 is positively charged, POPG is negatively charged, and POPC is neutral. Our simulation results demonstrated the initial stage of disruption of the bacterial membrane by LL-37 in atomic details. Comparison to experimental results on LL-37 and simulation studies in other systems was made.
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