Characterization of Membrane Interactions with Lactoferricin Peptides by Both All-Atom and Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Solid-State NMR, and Fluorescence Spectroscopy

Membrane binding of an acyl-lactoferricin B antimicrobial peptide from solid-state NMR experiments and molecular dynamics simulations.

One approach to the growing health problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria is the development of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as alternative treatments. The mechanism by which these AMPs selectively attack the bacterial membrane is not well understood, but is believed to depend on differences in membrane lipid composition. N-acylation of the small amidated hexapeptide, RRWQWR-NH(2) (LfB6), de...

Intermolecular Interactions and Protein Dynamics by Solid‐State NMR Spectroscopy

Understanding the dynamics of interacting proteins is a crucial step toward describing many biophysical processes. Here we investigate the backbone dynamics for protein GB1 in two different assemblies: crystalline GB1 and the precipitated GB1-antibody complex with a molecular weight of more than 300 kDa. We perform these measurements on samples containing as little as eight nanomoles of GB1. Fr...

Coarse grained potential functions for proteins derived from all-atom explicit-solvent molecular dynamics simulations

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Freezing Behavior of Pure Water and 14% Water-NaCl Mixture Using the Coarse-Grained Model

 We performed molecular dynamics simulations using the coarse-grained model to study the freezing behavior of pure water and 14% water-salt mixture in a wide range of temperatures for a very long time around 50 nanoseconds. For the salty water, an interface in nanoscale was used. For both systems, the f...

Supramolecular structure of membrane-associated polypeptides by combining solid-state NMR and molecular dynamics simulations.

Elemental biological functions such as molecular signal transduction are determined by the dynamic interplay between polypeptides and the membrane environment. Determining such supramolecular arrangements poses a significant challenge for classical structural biology methods. We introduce an iterative approach that combines magic-angle spinning solid-state NMR spectroscopy and atomistic molecul...