Lateral Black Lipid Membranes for Studying Peptide-Lipid Interactions

Membrane active compounds such as antimicrobial peptides, ionophores and voltage sensitive dyes have garnered attentions due to their interesting mode of actions and their potential applications in biotechnology and drug development. The creation and the improvement of such molecules are often hindered by a lack of analytical tools to screen molecules in a high throughput way or to study their fundamental mechanism in membranes. Our group has been developing different configurations of cell-free electrophysiological tools for the characterization of biomolecule-membrane interactions. In this work, we will present our recent setup, lateral black lipid membrane, with a special focus on the challenges we encountered during the development. Taking an advantage of the home-made tool, we have discovered a unique cooperative function between two well-known antimicrobial peptides (LL-37/HNP1) that kills bacteria more efficiently while minimizing the host damage by suppressing mammalian cell membrane lysis, named “antimicrobial peptide double cooperativity”. Such a double cooperativity may be used in our immune system and may help with developing efficient and safe antimicrobial agents in the future.