Determinants of Curvature-Sensing Behavior for MARCKS-Fragment Peptides

It is increasingly recognized that membrane curvature plays an important role in various cellular activities such as signaling and trafficking, as well as key issues involving health and disease development. Thus, curvature-sensing peptides are essential to the study and detection of highly curved bilayer structures. The effector domain of myristoylated alanine-rich C-kinase substrate (MARCKS-ED) has been demonstrated to have curvature-sensing ability. Research of the MARCKS-ED has further revealed that its Lys and Phe residues play an essential role in how MARCKS-ED detects and binds to curved bilayers. MARCKS-ED has the added property of being a lower-molecular-weight curvature sensor, which offers advantages in production. With that in mind, this work investigates peptide-sequence-related factors that influence curvature sensing and explores whether peptide fragments of even shorter length can function as curvature sensors. Using both experimental and computational methods, we studied the curvature-sensing capabilities of seven fragments of MARCKS-ED. Two of the longer fragments were designed from approximately the two halves of the full-length peptide whereas the five shorter fragments were taken from the central stretch of MARCKS-ED. Fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations show that the fragments that remain bound to the bilayer exhibit interactions with the bilayer similar to that of the full-length MARCKS-ED peptide. Fluorescence enhancement and anisotropy assays, meanwhile, reveal that five of the MARCKS fragments possess the ability to sense membrane curvature. Based on the sequences of the curvature-sensing fragments, it appears that the ability to sense curvature involves a balance between the numbers of positively charged residues and hydrophobic anchoring residues. Together, these findings help crystallize our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning the curvature-sensing behaviors of peptides, which will prove useful in the design of future curvature sensors.