Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Hamburg 2022

Biophysics at the Dawn of Exascale Computers

Poster Abstracts

9-POS Board 9 TRANSMEMBRANE PEPTIDES WITH DIPOLE MOMENT AS VOLTAGE SENSING ELEMENTS Konark Bisht 1 ; Himanshu Khandelia 1 ; 1 University of Southern Denmark, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Odense, Denmark Transmembrane (TM) voltage plays a vital role in the behaviour and functions of the lipid bilayer membrane. It regulates the exchange of particles across the membrane through TM proteins such as voltage-gated ion channels. This work studies a novel mechanism for sensing membrane voltage, which involves the reorientation of alpha-helices present in the TM proteins with the change in the membrane electric field. We consider model peptides having electrical dipole moments in a lipid bilayer and perform coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of variation of TM voltage on their tilt angles and ascertain the optimal parameters for designing a sensitive membrane voltage sensor.

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