Electrostatic effects in saturation of membrane binding of cationic cell-penetrating peptide

Membrane-active peptides that demonstrate cell-penetrating, antimicrobial or cytotoxic functions are diverse in their amino acid sequences, but share common physicochemical features like short length, amphipathic conformation in membrane environment and high net charge. Nonspecific electrostatic interactions of basic peptide residues with anionic membrane lipids play a crucial role in the initial binding of such peptides to plasma membranes of bacterial and mammalian cells. At the same time, a number of membrane-active peptides functions when they are localized at high concentrations on the lipid membranes. Dissecting the role of electrostatics in this functional peptide conditions is important to understand why the majority of them bear high positive charge. We have studied interaction of EB1 cell-penetrating peptide (charge + 8) with model anionic membranes. The saturation of peptide binding to liposomes that comprises 5%, 10% and 25% of negatively charged lipids (POPC/POPG mixture) was observed. We have found that peptide recharges liposomes and its surface saturating concentration increases with the amount of anionic lipids in a membrane so as a surface charge (bound peptide plus anionic lipids). This observation may be explained with the Gouy–Chapman theory based model with addition of independent effective peptide charges for peptide–peptide and peptide–lipid interactions, as well as steric saturation term. Additionally, in certain conditions, membrane bound peptide leads to liposome aggregation. In some lipid-to-peptide ratio regions disaggregation follows that may indicate an additional slow equilibration process after fast initial peptide binding.