Studies of synthetic peptide analogs of the amphipathic helix. Effect of charged amino acid residue topography on lipid affinity.

The amphipathic helix hypothesis for plasma lipoproteins was investigated using synthetic peptides. The lipid-associating properties of two potentially amphipathic model peptides and two analogs were studied by incubating synthetic peptides with small unilamellar vesicles and protein-lipid association examined by equilibrium density centrifugation, leakage of liposome-entrapped fluorescence compounds, intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence, and circular dichroism spectroscopy. The analog peptides were designed to determine the significance of the number and specific location of the charged residues in amphipathic domains of plasma lipoproteins to protein-lipid association. Based on the four procedures used to examine protein-lipid interactions, the two model peptides (18Aa, 18As) were found to associate strongly with liposomes; the two analog peptides (18As1, 18Asr), differing only with respect to the number and/or position of their charged residues, failed to demonstrate similar lipid binding properties. These findings support the earlier suggestions of the importance of the charged residues, but do not define the precise mechanisms involved. Such amino acids may help initiate the lipid-protein association by electrostatic interactions, contribute to the hydrophobicity of the nonpolar face of the helix by the acyl portion of lysine and arginine, and/or complement the charge distribution in the polar head regions of the phospholipid molecules.