ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Real-time attack on single Escherichia coli cells by the human antimicrobial peptide LL-37.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 144 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
144 citing papers in PubMed, 263 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cationic antimicrobial peptides promote microbial mutagenesis and pathoadaptation in chronic infections.PLoS pathogens · 2014Trial
- Membrane Disruption and Charge Neutralization Drive Synergy Between LL37-Derived Peptides and Polymyxins AgainstBiomolecules · 2026Article
- Membrane-Traversing Peptides: Mechanistic Landscapes, Assays, and Applications.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Chemical Optimization of Temporin A-L Peptides: From Native Isoforms to Enhanced Antimicrobial Analogs.ChemMedChem · 2026Review
- Antimicrobial peptoids pass rapidly through bacterial membranes and flocculate ribosomes and DNA: A single-cell fluorescence study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Aggregation-State Dynamics Drive Double Cooperativity Between Antimicrobial Peptides LL-37 and HNP1.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Bacterial cell fate under stress: lipid remodeling and antimicrobial peptide attack.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2026Article
- Heteroaggregation of Antimicrobial Peptides LL-37 and HNP‑1 Drives Cooperative Neutralization of Cytotoxicity.JACS Au · 2026Article
- Truncated Equinin B Variants Reveal the Sequence Determinants of Antimicrobial Selectivity.Marine drugs · 2026Article
- SARS-CoV-2 peptide fragments selectively dysregulate specific immune cell populations via Gaussian curvature targeting.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase-ProducingAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Structure of a barrel-stave pore formed by magainin-2 reveals anion selectivity and zipper-mediated assembly.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Disrupting membranes, controlling cell fate: the role of pore-forming proteins in cell death and therapy.Apoptosis : an international journal on programmed cell death · 2025Review
- Resurfacing promotes antibacterial activity of a lipid A-binding nanobody.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Antimicrobial peptide LL37 is potent against non-growingmSphere · 2025Article
- Valnemulin restores colistin sensitivity against multidrug-resistant gram-negative pathogens.Communications biology · 2024Article
- The evolution of antimicrobial peptide resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa is severely constrained by random peptide mixtures.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Time-Resolved Killing of Individual Bacterial Cells by a Polycationic Antimicrobial Polymer.ACS biomaterials science & engineering · 2024Article
- Balancing Act of the Intestinal Antimicrobial Proteins on Gut Microbiota and Health.Journal of microbiology (Seoul, Korea) · 2024Review
- PreventingACS applied materials & interfaces · 2024Article
84 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) provide prototypes for the design of unconventional antimicrobial agents. Existing bulk assays measure AMP activity but do not provide details of the growth-halting mechanism. We use fluorescence microscopy to directly observe the attack of the human antimicrobial peptide LL-37 on single Escherichia coli cells in real time. Our findings strongly suggest that disruption of the cytoplasmic membrane is not the growth-halting mechanism. At 8 μM, LL-37 binding saturates the outer membrane (OM) within 1 min. Translocation across the OM and access to the periplasmic space (5-25 min later) correlates in time with the halting of growth. Septating cells are attacked more readily than nonseptating cells. The halting of growth may occur because of LL-37 interference with cell wall biogenesis. Only well after growth halts does the peptide permeabilize the cytoplasmic membrane to GFP and the small dye Sytox Green. The assay enables dissection of antimicrobial design criteria into two parts: translocation across the OM and the subsequent halting of growth.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.