ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Process of inducing pores in membranes by melittin.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 148 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
148 citing papers in PubMed, 350 citations in OpenAlex.
- Melittin-modified Paclitaxel Liposomes as a Synergistic Strategy for Anti-keloid Therapy.The AAPS journal · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of In Vitro Cytotoxicity of Honeybee Venom Components and Melittin-Functionalized FeMaterials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Membrane-Associated Biomolecules for Synthetic Cell Signalling.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2026Review
- Tvp complexes support formation of the VgrG-PAAR spike during Type VI secretion system assembly.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- A primordial synaptotagmin-independent function of complexin in regulated exocytosis.Nature communications · 2026Article
- In Vitro Antitumor Effects of Melittin Attached to FeMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Membrane Protein Insertion in Cells: Principles, Pathways, and Quality Control.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Breaking the membrane heredity paradox through de novo protocell formation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Bacterial cell fate under stress: lipid remodeling and antimicrobial peptide attack.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2026Article
- Understanding cell-penetrating peptide mechanisms using computational electrophysiology simulations.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2026Article
- Membrane Pore Formation Unveiled by ∞RETIS Path Sampling: From Thinning to Flip-Flop.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2026Article
- Predicting peptide orientation in membrane interactions: a review on transmembrane and surface-bound states.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2026Review
- Discovery, Isolation, and Bactericidal Activity of a Cyclotide fromJournal of natural products · 2026Article
- Investigating the Effect of Melittin Peptide in Preventing Biofilm Formation, Adhesion and Expression of Virulence Genes in Listeria monocytogenes.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2025Article
- Structure of a barrel-stave pore formed by magainin-2 reveals anion selectivity and zipper-mediated assembly.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Elucidating the Impact of Red Blood Cell Membrane Components on Melittin-Induced Pore Formation with Molecular Dynamics Simulations.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Article
- An intracellular release peptide display technology unveils an antimicrobial peptide with low probability for resistance development.iScience · 2025Article
- Cholesterol Affects the Pore Formation and the Membrane-Membrane Interaction Induced by an Antimicrobial Peptide, NK-2, in Phospholipid Vesicles.The Journal of membrane biology · 2025Article
- Review
- The Role of Flexibility in the Bioactivity of Short α-Helical Antimicrobial Peptides.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
88 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Melittin is a prototype of the ubiquitous antimicrobial peptides that induce pores in membranes. It is commonly used as a molecular device for membrane permeabilization. Even at concentrations in the nanomolar range, melittin can induce transient pores that allow transmembrane conduction of atomic ions but not leakage of glucose or larger molecules. At micromolar concentrations, melittin induces stable pores allowing transmembrane leakage of molecules up to tens of kilodaltons, corresponding to its antimicrobial activities. Despite extensive studies, aspects of the molecular mechanism for pore formation remain unclear. To clarify the mechanism, one must know the states of the melittin-bound membrane before and after the process. By correlating experiments using giant unilamellar vesicles with those of peptide-lipid multilayers, we found that melittin bound on the vesicle translocated and redistributed to both sides of the membrane before the formation of stable pores. Furthermore, stable pores are formed only above a critical peptide-to-lipid ratio. The initial states for transient and stable pores are different, which implies different mechanisms at low and high peptide concentrations. To determine the lipidic structure of the pore, the pores in peptide-lipid multilayers were induced to form a lattice and examined by anomalous X-ray diffraction. The electron density distribution of lipid labels shows that the pore is formed by merging of two interfaces through a hole. The molecular property of melittin is such that it adsorbs strongly to the bilayer interface. Pore formation can be viewed as the bilayer adopting a lipid configuration to accommodate its excessive interfacial area.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.