GEMINI SURFACTANTS AS MEMBRANE MIMETIC

In order to study the function of Gemini surfactant as cell membrane mimetic in the in vitro studies, interaction types of this lipid composed of n-hexadecyle tails, dimethyl ammonium heads and (CH2)5 carbon linker (GSP) with an anionic protein, Ribonuclease Sa (RNase Sa), was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. To this end, six GSP molecules together with one RNase Sa were dissolved in a water box simulating experimental conditions. In order to evaluate the simulation results, the number of each of the hydrophobic and electrostatic (specially hydrogen bonding and cation-ᴨ) interactions were counted in the production period of simulation. According to the simulation results, the electrostatic interactions play the main contributions in the lipid-protein complex stabilization.