کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
443734 692760 2007 6 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Structural and functional behavior of biologically active monomeric melittin
موضوعات مرتبط
مهندسی و علوم پایه شیمی شیمی تئوریک و عملی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Structural and functional behavior of biologically active monomeric melittin
چکیده انگلیسی

Melittin is a well-known water-soluble toxic peptide present in bee venom of Apis mellifera, capable of interacting with and disrupting cell membranes thus producing many effects on living cells. Additionally, melittin induces activation of phospholipases and calmodulin upon interaction with cellular membranes. The conformation and aggregation state adopted by melittin in solution depends on several factors including the peptide concentration, ionic strength, pH and the nature of the ions in the aqueous medium. Such conformational dependence on the peptide environment gives new insights over the currently available 3D structures of melittin and, ultimately, over its biologically functional unit. Based on crystallographic data, the melittin tetramer has been proposed as its bioactive form. Contrarily to such data, we show in this work the results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations, which clearly indicate that the tetrameric organization of melittin is not stable under biological conditions dissociating after 2.5 ns through a 10 ns trajectory. We found that the tetrameric form of melittin is stable only in conditions of high pH and high peptide concentration in the molecular dynamics simulations. Moreover, when in plasma melittin appears to be a random coil monomer, folding only upon interaction with biological membranes. In summary, these findings elucidate several properties of melittin structure and dynamics, projecting significant implications in the study of its biological function.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling - Volume 25, Issue 6, March 2007, Pages 767–772
نویسندگان
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