Membrane peptide folding studies require peptides that bind to lipid vesicles while remaining water-soluble. Currently available peptides are either artificial designs, or they have membrane-disrupting antimicrobial or venomous activity. As a first step to derive new soluble membrane-binding peptides from naturally occurring membrane proteins, we trained a learning algorithm on several water-soluble and insoluble helical peptides by comparing its predictions with experimental solubility and fluorescence vesicle binding assays. The algorithm yielded an easily computed score S to discover soluble peptides in databases of transmembrane helical proteins. To validate the algorithm, we selected four helices bas... More
Membrane peptide folding studies require peptides that bind to lipid vesicles while remaining water-soluble. Currently available peptides are either artificial designs, or they have membrane-disrupting antimicrobial or venomous activity. As a first step to derive new soluble membrane-binding peptides from naturally occurring membrane proteins, we trained a learning algorithm on several water-soluble and insoluble helical peptides by comparing its predictions with experimental solubility and fluorescence vesicle binding assays. The algorithm yielded an easily computed score S to discover soluble peptides in databases of transmembrane helical proteins. To validate the algorithm, we selected four helices based on a good S score. Experiments showed that all four are soluble at >25 microM, and that three bind to vesicles. We illustrate with an example that the vesicle binding of such peptides can be temperature-tuned. Finally, we predict four additional peptides that should be water-soluble and able to bind to lipid vesicles.