Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
FEBS Lett. 2010 May 3;584(9):1806-13. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2009.11.046. Epub 2009 Nov 16.
Arginine-rich cell-penetrating peptides are short cationic peptides capable of traversing the plasma membranes of eukaryotic cells. While successful intracellular delivery of many biologically active macromolecules has been accomplished using these peptides, their mechanisms of cell entry are still under investigation. Recent dialogue has centered on a debate over the roles that direct translocation and endocytotic pathways play in internalization of cell-penetrating peptides. In this paper, we review the evidence for the broad range of proposed mechanisms, and show that each distinct process requires negative Gaussian membrane curvature as a necessary condition. Generation of negative Gaussian curvature by cell-penetrating peptides is directly related to their arginine content. We illustrate these concepts using HIV TAT as an example.
富含精氨酸的细胞穿透肽是能够穿过真核细胞的细胞膜的短阳离子肽。虽然这些肽已成功地将许多生物活性大分子递送到细胞内，但它们的细胞进入机制仍在研究中。最近的讨论集中在直接转位和内吞途径在穿透肽内化中所起作用的争论上。在本文中，我们回顾了广泛提出的机制的证据，并表明每个不同的过程都需要负高斯膜曲率作为必要条件。细胞穿透肽产生负高斯曲率与它们的精氨酸含量直接相关。我们使用 HIV TAT 作为一个例子来说明这些概念。
