Interaction between lipids and antimicrobial oligomers studied by solid-state NMR.

Antimicrobial peptides and their synthetic analogues are well known to interact with the cell membrane, which has complex distributions of lipids. The phase behavior of DOPE/DOPG mixed lipids and the interaction between the lipids and several synthetic amphiphilic antimicrobial oligomers (AMOs) were studied by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). A phase diagram of the lipids over a broad window of water content was constructed. There are large areas in the phase diagram where multiple phases coexist, and the fraction of each phase at a given state is dependent on the sample's preparation and thermal history. The comparable stability of the different phases implies that even slight changes in the lipid condition could result in substantial changes to the phase structure, which may be utilized by living organisms to achieve many membrane functions. Nuclear Overhauser spectroscopy (NOESY) and several other NMR experiments indicated that the AMO primarily resides in the head group region of the lipids and that DOPE, the negative intrinsic curvature lipid, does not selectively enrich in the inverted hexagonal phase.