Synergistic Membrane Disruption of

Biomimetic lipid platforms provide versatile tools for mimicking various types of biological membranes and enable investigation of how industrially important amphiphiles (e.g., permeation enhancers and surfactants) interact with different membrane compositions. For example, antimicrobial lipids such as medium-chain fatty acids (FAs) and monoglycerides (MGs) are promising antibiotic alternatives that disrupt bacterial membranes and their distinct mechanisms of action are a topic of ongoing interest. The potency and targeting spectrum of individual antimicrobial lipids vary and mixing different lipids can improve functional activities. Biophysical studies indicate that optimally tuned mixtures exhibit greater disruption of synthetic lipid bilayers; however, their activity against more complex bacterial membrane compositions is largely unexplored. Herein, we applied electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to investigate how two MG/FA pairs-composed of 10-carbon long monocaprin (MC) with capric acid (CA) and 12-carbon long glycerol monolaurate (GML) with lauric acid (LA)-disrupt tethered lipid bilayers composed of