Rhombohedral Trap for Studying Molecular Oligomerization in Membranes: Application to Daptomycin

Abstract

A persistent problem in the studies of membrane-active peptides, including Antimicrobial peptides and pathogenic amyloidal peptides, is the lack of methods for investigating their molecular configurations in membranes. These peptides spontaneously bind to membranes from solutions, and often form oligomers that induce changes of membrane permeability. For antimicrobials, such actions appear to relate to the antimicrobial mechanisms, but for amyloidal peptides, the oligomerization has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases.