Ll‐37 driven phase transition and stacking in oligolamellar gram‐negative bacterial membrane modelsShow others and affiliations
2026 (English)In: Advanced Functional Materials, ISSN 1616-301X, E-ISSN 1616-3028, article id e32053Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]
Multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria are a growing clinical threat, driving the search for alternative antimicrobial strategies, such as antimicrobial peptide (AMP)- based materials. However, the rational design of such systems remains constrained by simplified membrane models that neglect critical components of the Gram-negative envelope, such as lipopolysaccharides and cardiolipin, and fail to capture its dual-membrane architecture. This work establishes a materials-oriented experimental framework for constructing membrane-mimetic oligolamellar structures that actively integrate the human AMP LL-37. These hierarchically organized assemblies emulate the compositional and structural complexity of the Gram-negative inner and outer membranes and have the potential to serve as tunable soft-matter platforms for the delivery of AMPs. Combining small-angle X-ray scattering, electron microscopy, electrophoretic mobility analysis, and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, we show that LL-37 interacts strongly with cardiolipin, driving phase transitions from multilamellar vesicles to nanoscale assemblies, followed by membrane stacking. This restructuring phenomenon is unlikely to occur in conventional single-bilayer systems. In the presence of lipopolysaccharides, polysaccharide side chains modulate but do not suppress this transition, revealing a lipid-specific reorganisation mechanism relevant to the design of AMP-based materials targeting Gram-negative bacteria. These results deepen mechanistic understanding of AMP-membrane interactions and establish design principles for peptide-integrated soft materials with programmable structural responses. The presented platform further enables the development of antimicrobial biointerfaces through targeted membrane remodeling.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Wiley-VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, 2026. article id e32053
Keywords [en]
gram-negative membrane models, LL-37, molecular Dynamics, oligolamellar vesicles, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS)
National Category
Physical Chemistry
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-251238DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202532053Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105032472794OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-251238DiVA, id: diva2:2046827
2026-03-182026-03-182026-03-18