De novo design of a nanopore for single-molecule detection that incorporates a ß-hairpin peptide.

The amino-acid sequence of a protein encodes information on its three-dimensional structure and specific functionality. De novo design has emerged as a method to manipulate the primary structure for the development of artificial proteins and peptides with desired functionality. This paper describes the de novo design of a pore-forming peptide, named SV28, that has a ß-hairpin structure and assembles to form a stable nanopore in a bilayer lipid membrane. This large synthetic nanopore is an entirely artificial device for practical applications. The peptide forms multidispersely sized nanopore structures ranging from 1.7 to 6.3 nm in diameter and can detect DNAs. To form a monodispersely sized nanopore, we redesigned the SV28 by introducing a glycine-kink mutation. The resulting redesigned peptide forms a monodisperse pore with a diameter of 1.7 nm leading to detection of a single polypeptide chain. Such de novo design of a ß-hairpin peptide has the potential to create artificial nanopores, which can be size adjusted to a target molecule.

Electrophysiological Analysis of Membrane Disruption by Bombinin and Its Isomer Using the Lipid Bilayer System.

Bombinin H2 and H4 are peptides isolated from the skin of the frog Bombina variegata that exhibit antimicrobial activity against Leishmania as well as bacteria. H4 is an isomer of H2 that has d-allo-Ile at position 2 from the N-terminus. Although H4 exhibits higher antimicrobial activity than that of H2, the molecular mechanism has remained unclear. In this study, we tried to reveal the molecular mechanism in terms of lipid membrane disruption through pore formation, using electrophysiological measurements. Based on our experiments, we estimated the pore-forming structure, pore size, and the kinetics in a bacteria model membrane. Stochastic analysis of the current data indicated that peptide isomerization enables us to accelerate the pore formation owing to the higher affinity between the peptide and lipid membrane. Additionally, the H2/H4 mixture was studied with 31P NMR and cross-linking experiment with mass spectrometry. It was found that heterogeneous pore formation with H2 and H4 was indicated. This electrophysiological approach will likely be promising as a useful tool for analyzing the molecular mechanism of pore-forming peptides.