Hemolytic and antimicrobial activities of the twenty-four individual omission analogues of melittin - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 1991 May 14;30(19):4671-8.

doi: 10.1021/bi00233a006.

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Hemolytic and antimicrobial activities of the twenty-four individual omission analogues of melittin

S E Blondelle et al. Biochemistry. 1991.

Abstract

Although melittin's hemolytic activity has been extensively studied, the orientation of membrane-bound melittin remains uncertain. We have investigated the effect of individually omitted amino acid residues on melittin's activity and related these results to the existing models of melittin-membrane interaction. The extent of hemolysis of the omission analogues closely followed the four known conformational regions of melittin: omission of any of the residues making up the two alpha-helical regions decreased the hemolytic activity relative to melittin, while omission of any of the residues making up the "hinge" or the C-terminal regions had little or no effect. Our results correlate best with a proposed model in which melittin initially forms "holes" in the membrane, resulting in an initial rapid loss of hemoglobin; the membrane-bound melittin is then internalized into the membrane, resulting in a later slow phase of hemoglobin loss. It was also found that induced structural effects caused by peptide-lipid interactions could be studied by using RP-HPLC, with an excellent correlation found between the retention times of the individual omission analogues and their hemolytic activities.

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