title: Characterization of gramicidin A in an inverted micellar environment. A combined high-performance liquid chromatographic and spectroscopic study.
abstract: We have investigated the conformational adaptability of gramicidin A incorporated into reverse micelles of sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl)sulfosuccinate (AOT)/isooctane/water, a so far unexplored "host" membrane-mimetic model system for this peptide. A high-performance liquid chromatographic strategy previously developed for the study of gramicidin in phospholipid vesicles and normal micelles [Bañó et al. (1989) FEBS Lett. 250, 67; Bañó et al. (1991) Biochemistry 30, 886] has been successfully extended to this system. The method has permitted the separation of peptide conformational species, namely, double-stranded dimers and monomers, and an accurate quantitation of their proportion in the inverted micellar environment. It has been demonstrated that, once inserted in the micelle, the double-stranded dimers undergo a dissociation process toward a thermodynamically stable monomeric configuration, whose monomerization rate constant (k1) is dependent in a bell-shaped manner on the water:surfactant mole ratio, w0. A tight correlation between k1 and the double-stranded dimer backbone conformation has been found from the comparison of chromatographic and circular dichroism data. In addition, fluorescence experiments indicate that the peptide tryptophans are in a rather nonpolar environment, with a restricted accessibility to water-soluble quenchers such as acrylamide.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Universitat de València, Spain.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Salom
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Abad
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Braco
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002627:Chemistry, Physical; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D002942:Circular Dichroism; D004143:Dioctyl Sulfosuccinic Acid; D005454:Fluorescence Polarization; D006096:Gramicidin / Q000737:chemistry*; D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D008823:Micelles; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011487:Protein Conformation; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence; D013057:Spectrum Analysis
chemical_list: D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D008823:Micelles; D004143:Dioctyl Sulfosuccinic Acid; D006096:Gramicidin