Specific Ion Interaction Dominates over Hydrophobic Matching Effects in Peptide–Lipid Bilayer Interactions: The Case of Short Peptide

Insertion of short peptides into the cell membrane is energetically unfavorable and challenges the commonly accepted hydrophobic matching principle. Yet there has been evidence that many short peptides can penetrate into the cells to perform the biological functions in salt solution. On the basis of the previous study ( J. Phys. Chem. C 2013, 117, 11095−11103), here we further performed a systematic study on the interaction of mastoparan with various neutral lipid bilayers with different lipid chain lengths in situ to examine the hydrophobic matching principle in different aqueous salt environments using sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy. It is found that the hydrophobic matching is the dominant driving force for the association of MP with a lipid bilayer in a pure water environment. However, in a kosmotropic ion environment, the hydration of ions can overcome the hydrophobic mismatching effects, leading to the insertion of MP into lipid bilayers with much longer hydrophobic lengths. When the hydrophobic thickness of the bilayer is much longer than MP’s hydrophobic length, MP diffuses on a single monolayer, rather than spanning the bilayer to prevent the exposure of the hydrophilic part of MP to the lipid hydrophobic moiety. Findings from the present study suggest that the interaction between the positively charged choline group of a lipid and kosmotropic ions could be an important step for effective peptide insertion into a cell membrane. Results from our studies will provide an insight into how the short peptides form the ion channel in a thick membrane and offer some ideas for cellular delivery.