Diffusion NMR study of complex formation in membrane-associated peptides

Pulsed-field-gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) is used to obtain the true hydrodynamic size of complexes of peptides with sodium dodecyl sulfate SDS micelles. The peptide used in this study is a 19-residue antimicrobial peptide, GAD-2. Two smaller dipeptides, alanine–glycine (Ala–Gly) and tyrosine–leucine (Tyr–Leu), are used for comparison. We use PFG-NMR to simultaneously measure diffusion coefficients of both peptide and surfactant. These two inputs, as a function of SDS concentration, are then fit to a simple two species model that neglects hydrodynamic interactions between complexes. From this we obtain the fraction of free SDS, and the hydrodynamic size of complexes in a GAD-2–SDS system as a function of SDS concentration. These results are compared to those for smaller dipeptides and for peptide-free solutions. At low SDS concentrations ([SDS] ≤ 25 mM), the results self-consistently point to a GAD-2–SDS complex of fixed hydrodynamic size R = (5.5 ± 0.3) nm. At intermediate SDS concentrations (25 mM < [SDS] < 60 mM), the apparent size of a GAD-2–SDS complex shows almost a factor of two increase without a significant change in surfactant-to-peptide ratio within a complex, most likely implying an increase in the number of peptides in a complex. For peptide-free solutions, the self-diffusion coefficients of SDS with and without buffer are significantly different at low SDS concentrations but merge above [SDS] = 60 mM. We find that in order to obtain unambiguous information about the hydrodynamic size of a peptide-surfactant complex from diffusion measurements, experiments must be carried out at or below [SDS] = 25 mM.