What is it about?

In the last 3 decades, a new types of antibiotics have been discovered. Unlike the conventional antibiotics which targets protein receptors and are prone to bacteria resistance, the new type targets the lipid membranes. This review article describes the pore-forming mechanism of a major class of AMPs and also points out the existence of other classes of membrane-active antibiotics whose mechanisms are not yet understood.

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Why is it important?

Antibiotics are arguably the most important discovery of the modern medicine. After curing countless number of infections suffered by human, their usefulness is now severely threatened by bacterial resistance. Membrane-active antibiotics are a potential solution. At least one membrane-active antibiotic called daptomycin has been approved by US FDA for the treatment of Gram-positive infections.

Perspectives

Following the doctrine of structure-function relationship, AMPs are often viewed as the molecular scaffolding of pores in membranes. Instead we believe that the full mechanism of AMPs is understandable if we consider the interactions of AMPs are with the whole membrane domain which induce structural transformations of the membrane, rather than forming localized molecular structures.

Huey Huang
Rice University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Understanding membrane-active antimicrobial peptides, Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics, January 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0033583517000087.
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