Protonation-Driven Membrane Insertion of a pH-Low Insertion Peptide.

The pH-low insertion peptide (pHLIP) inserts into membranes and forms a transmembrane (TM) α-helix in response to slight acidity, and has shown great potential for cancer diagnosis and treatment. As a lead, pHLIP is challenging to optimize because the mechanism of its pH-dependent membrane interactions is not completely understood. Within pHLIP there are multiple D/E residues which could sense the pH change, the particular role played by each of them in the protonation-driven insertion process is not clear.

Residue-specific structures and membrane locations of pH-low insertion peptide by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance.

The pH-low insertion peptide (pHLIP) binds to a membrane at pH 7.4 unstructured but folds across the bilayer as a transmembrane helix at pH∼6. Despite their promising applications as imaging probes and drug carriers that target cancer cells for cytoplasmic cargo delivery, the mechanism of pH modulation on pHLIP-membrane interactions has not been completely understood.