1. Gausemycin antibiotic family act via Ca2+-dependent mem-brane targeting
- Author
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Vladimir Korshun, Tatyana Kravchenko, Alexander Paramonov, Arsen Kudzhaev, Svetlana Efimova, Alexey Khorev, Gulnara Kudryakova, Igor Ivanov, Alexey Chistov, Anna Baranova, Maxim Krasilnikov, Olda Lapchinskaya, Anton Tyurin, Olga Ostroumova, Ivan Smirnov, Stanislav Terekhov, Olga Dontsova, Zakhar Shenkarev, and Vera Alferova
- Abstract
Recently, we discovered a novel lipoglycopeptide antibiotic family gausemycin with exceptional structural novelty. We reported two major constituents of the family gausemycins A and B and characterized their antimicrobial activities. Here-in we studied the molecular mechanism of action of gausemycins and report the isolation and structure elucidation of other members of the family gausemycins C, D, E and F, the minor components of the mixture. Antimicrobial activity of the new congeners was found to be lower than that of the previously reported gausemycins A and B, thus suggesting the importance of the free δ amino group of Orn2 and O-glycosylation of Tyr5 for biological function. To disclose the mecha-nism of action of gausemycin family we investigated the antimicrobial activity of the most active compounds, gausemy-cins A and B, in the presence of Ca2+, other metal ions, and phosphate. Gausemycins require significantly higher Ca2+ con-centration for maximum activity than daptomycin, but lower than that required for malacidine and cadasides. Species-specific antimicrobial activity was found upon testing against a wide panel of Gram-positive bacteria. Membranes were previously proposed as a plausible target of gausemycins, therefore, we explored their interactions with various model membrane systems, including lipid bilayers and micelles. The pore-forming ability was found to be dramatically depend-ent on Ca2+ concentration and the lipid composition of the membrane. The NMR study of gausemycin B in zwitterionic and anionic micelles suggested putative structure of the gausemycin/membrane complex and revealed binding of Ca2+ by the macrocyclic domain of the antibiotic.
- Published
- 2022