Lipid composition influences the membrane-disrupting activity of antimicrobial methacrylate co-polymers

Amphiphilic methacrylate co-polymers recently demonstrated antimicrobial activity. To understand their activity mechanism, we prepared three homologous methacrylate co-polymers with activity ranging from inactive (MMA) over specifically active (EMA) to non-specifically active (BMA) against bacteria and human erythrocytes. Fluorescent dye leakage assays were used to characterize their membrane-disrupting activity against liposomes of different compositions. From bacterial membrane-mimicking liposomes (composed of Escherichia coli extract or 20:80 DOPG/DOPE), the two active forms, EMA and BMA, caused more dye leakage than the inactive MMA, which mirrors their antibacterial activity trend. From mammalian membrane-mimicking liposomes (composed of DOPC or 20:80 DOPG/DOPC), the highly hemolytic BMA caused significantly more leakage than MMA and EMA, which mirrors its hemolytic activity trend. Moreover, to dissect the effect of intrinsic membrane curvature from that of membrane charge, we used a ternary membrane with constant charge and tunable intrinsic curvature. Specifically, we used membranes composed of DOPG/DOPE/DOPC with constant DOPG content and varying DOPE/DOPC ratio. To significantly disrupt this model, methacrylate co-polymers with different activity profiles required a different minimum threshold DOPE content. In contrast, variation in DOPG/DOPC ratio at constant DOPE concentration did not show a similar influence on the selective membrane-disrupting activity of these co-polymers. Our results suggested that the intrinsic membrane curvature, rather than membrane charge, may play a major role in the selective membrane-disrupting activity of methacrylate co-polymers. Since more PE lipids exist in bacterial membranes than in eukaryotic membranes, our results imply that negative-intrinsic-curvature lipids such as PE may contribute to the selective antimicrobial activity.