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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

lipid A, binding of lipid A, polymyxin B, A-PMB

College

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Abstract

Lipid A (1 in Fig. 1) is a bacterial compound that can cause sepsis, an overreaction of the immune system during bacterial infections.1 Because no good treatment is known, sepsis causes over 100,000 deaths annually in the U.S.1 Treatments for sepsis are difficult to develop partly due to a lack of understanding of how lipid A interacts with other molecules. Consequently, we are synthesizing lipid A analogs (3-6 in Fig. 3) to studying the mechanism of binding of lipid A to polymyxin B (PMB, 2 in Fig. 2), a naturally occurring cyclic peptide. Understanding the mechanism of binding will aid in developing medicinal compounds that bind and detoxify lipid A. In addition, PMB shares many structural similarities with the active sites of immune system proteins that bind lipid A.2 Thus the lipid A-PMB system may serve as a model for understanding immune system interactions with lipid A.

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