Analysis of the interactions of fatty acyds hydroperoxides with biomimetic membranes by complementary biophysical approaches

In the actual context, biopesticides have emerged as a main alternative to conventional agriculture1. Hence, elicitors are metabolites naturally produced by microorganisms, pathogenic or not, and plants which are able to induce the natural resistance of plants. Also, they have proved to be excellent candidates for biological control. In this context, the lipoxygenase pathway leads to the formation of fatty acid degradation products, called oxylipins, which appear to be crucial agents in plant defence mechanisms2,3. Moreover, with their broad spectrum of action and their possible inducibility, oxylipins appear to be promising candidates for their use as elicitors4.
This work focuses on two hydroperoxy-derived oxylipins, the 13(S)-hydroperoxy-octadecadienoic acid (13-HPOD) and the 13(S)-hydroperoxy-octadecatrienoic acid (13-HPOT). The study of the interaction of such compounds with representative plant plasma membrane lipids is essential to understand plant resistance mechanisms. Several in silico and experimental techniques of biophysics showed that acyl-hydroperoxides have significant adsorption capacity and a strong affinity for model membranes. They may also penetrate biological membrane but no permeabilisation effect was observed in this work. Slight conformational differences seem to have a significant impact on their ability to interact with plant plasma membranes.
Based on these results, further investigation of the interactions of fatty acids hydroperoxides, even more on the 9-forms, with plant plasma membranes and eventually in the presence of phytopathogenic species, would allow a better understanding of the innate immunity and, on the longer term, could lead to the development of new elicitors with biological mechanisms potentially independent of membrane protein receptors.