Does oxidative damage enhance or hinder antimicrobial peptide insertion into model bacterial lipid monolayers?

Continuation Experiment - A number of antimicrobial peptides work, at least in part, by interacting specifically with the lipid layers of microbial cells, the composition of which differs in significant ways from that of mammalian cells. For instance, the antibacterial peptide protegrin is known to interact preferentially with bacterial membranes, which contain large amounts of anionic lipids, such as phosphoglycerol, PG, lipids, rather than mammalian cell membranes which are richer in phosphocholine, PC, lipids. The lipid layers of both microbial and mammalian cells are subject to continuous oxidative attack. In this proposal we wish to complete our recent successful exploration of how the presence of an oxidized lipid within model bacterial lipid monolayers changes the extend and nature of the interaction with protegrin, and thus enable us to write our work up for publication.