What is it about?
Cell penetrating motifs are combined with DNA condensing motifs in the designed cell penetrating peptides. Five different peptides have been analysed. The peptides were compared with stearylated octa-arginine which served as a reference cell penetrating peptide.
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Why is it important?
Addition of fatty acid (hydrophobic) moieties to cell penetrating peptides to aid in traversing the cell membrane is popular. But these CPP designs exhibit cellular toxicity and seem unsuitable at higher concentrations. Instead membrane translocating sequences of natural proteins/transcription factors may be employed to increase cellular permeability and deliverance of the cargo to the nucleus. One of the designed peptides (MTS-R8) showed good DNA condensing ability similar to stearylated octa-arginine and is a good candidate for gene delivery.
Perspectives
I have enjoyed the investigative process, writing and the subsequent publication process. I hope the article is easy to comprehend and enables researchers to gain a different perspective on gene delivery with cell penetrating peptides.
Dr Archana Upadhya
Humera Khan College of Pharmacy
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions between cell penetrating peptides and plasmid DNA are important for stable non-covalent complexation and intracellular delivery, Journal of Peptide Science, October 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/psc.2927.
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