Discrimination of Conductance of Lower and Higher Oligomeric Alamethicin Pores

Abstract

Experimental studies of antimicrobial peptides having a pore-forming mechanism of action have recently attracted increasing interest due to their broad spectrum of activity and numerous clinical applications. Alamethicin has been widely studied as an antimicrobial peptide and a model for ion channel-forming proteins. However, the lack of simple analytical tools for studying mechanisms of interaction of pore-forming peptides and biological membranes at very low peptide concentrations remains a problem. Here in a short report, we describe an experimental approach for performing time-dependent discrimination of transmembrane current induced by fractions of lower- and higher-order oligomeric alamethicin pores using mitochondria.