A minimalistic tetrapeptide amphiphile scaffold for transmembrane pores with a preference for sodium

Debajyoti Basak; Sucheta Sridhar; Amal K Bera; Nandita Madhavan

doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2017.04.081

A minimalistic tetrapeptide amphiphile scaffold for transmembrane pores with a preference for sodium

Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2017 Jul 1;27(13):2886-2889. doi: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2017.04.081. Epub 2017 Apr 27.

Authors

Debajyoti Basak¹, Sucheta Sridhar², Amal K Bera², Nandita Madhavan³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India.
² Department of Bio-Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India.
³ Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India; Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 28487073
DOI: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2017.04.081

Abstract

Synthetic channels or pores that are easy to synthesize, stable and cation-selective are extremely attractive for the development of therapeutics and materials. Herein, we report a pore developed from a small tetrapeptide scaffold that shows a preference for sodium over lithium/potassium. The sodium selectivity is attributed to the appended oligoether tail at the C-terminus. A peptide dimer is proposed as the predominant cation-transporting pore. Such pyridine containing stable pores can be potentially utilized for the pH modulated ion transport.

Keywords: Amphiphiles; Ion channels; Peptides; Pores; Sodium transport.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
Lipid Bilayers / chemistry
Molecular Structure
Oligopeptides / chemical synthesis
Oligopeptides / chemistry*
Sodium / chemistry*
Surface-Active Agents / chemical synthesis
Surface-Active Agents / chemistry*

Substances

Lipid Bilayers
Oligopeptides
Surface-Active Agents
Sodium