Synergistic Membrane Disruption of E. coli Tethered Lipid Bilayers by Antimicrobial Lipid Mixtures

TL;DR

This study shows how mixing specific antimicrobial lipids can enhance their ability to disrupt bacterial membranes, offering a new approach to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that synergistic membrane disruption can be achieved by combining antimicrobial lipids with distinct interaction profiles.

Findings

Mixtures of monocaprin and capric acid at intermediate ratios synergistically disrupt E. coli membranes.

Glycerol monolaurate and lauric acid mixtures lack synergy and weakly interact with bacterial membranes.

Synergistic activity depends on the molar ratio of monocaprin and capric acid rather than total concentration.

Abstract

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 Escherichia coli bacterial lipids. While MC and CA individually inhibit E. coli, MC/CA mixtures at intermediate ratios displayed synergistic membrane-disruptive activity. Mechanistic studies showed that this synergistic activity depends on the MC/CA molar ratio rather than total lipid concentration. In contrast, GML/LA mixtures had weak membrane interactions across all tested ratios and lacked synergy, which is consistent with their low activity against E. coli. Together, the EIS results reveal that an effective disruption synergy against target membranes can arise from combining individually active antimicrobial lipids with distinct membrane-interaction profiles, laying the foundation to develop potent antimicrobial lipid formulations for tackling antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

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