All-Atom Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Bacterial Porins Phoe from E. Coli And VCA1008 from V. Cholerae: Revealing the Molecular Origin of Ion Selectivity

Abstract

Outer membrane pore-forming proteins play an essential role in survival, adaptation and response to environment of Gram-negative bacteria, and contribute for invasion of host organisms and even for drug resistance of such pathogens. These membrane proteins form large and almost unspecific ion channels through the membrane and a lot of effort was made to determine and to justify the ion selectivity of these pores (Alcaraz et al. 2009). Altough there is some sequence and structural similarities between porins PhoE from E.