Peptide pheromone plantaricin a produced by Lactobacillus plantarum permeabilizes liver and kidney cells.

Certain antimicrobial peptides from multicellular animals kill a variety of tumor cells at concentrations not affecting normal eukaryotic cells. Recently, it was reported that also plantaricin A (PlnA), which is a peptide pheromone with strain-specific antibacterial activity produced by Lactobacillus plantarum, permeabilizes cancerous rat pituitary cells (GH(4) cells), whereas normal rat anterior pituitary cells are resistant to the peptide. To examine whether the preferential permeabilization of cancerous cells is a general feature of PlnA, we studied its effect on primary cultures of cells from rat liver (hepatocytes, endothelial, and Kupffer cells) and rat kidney cortex, as well as two epithelial cell lines of primate kidney origin (Vero cells from green monkey and human Caki-2 cells). The Vero cell line is derived from normal cells, whereas the Caki-2 cell line is derived from a cancerous tumor. The membrane effects were studied by patch clamp recordings and microfluorometric (fura-2) monitoring of the cytosolic concentrations of Ca(2+) ([Ca(2+)](i)) and fluorophore. In all the tested cell types except Kupffer cells, exposure to 10-100 microM PlnA induced a nearly instant permeabilization of the membrane, indicated by the following criteria: increased membrane conductance, membrane depolarization, increased [Ca(2+)](i), and diffusional loss of fluorophore from the cytosol. At a concentration of 5 microM, PlnA had no effect on any of the cell types. The Kupffer cells were permeabilized by 500 microM PlnA. We conclude that the permeabilizing effect of PlnA is not restricted to cancerous cells.