Are Amphipathic Asymmetric Peptides Ubiquitous Structures For Membrane Destabilisation?

The fusion of some viruses (SIV, BLV, etc) to host cells implicates short fragments of the fusion protein that are asymmetric amphipathic helices in molecular modelling. The tilted orientation of these fragments at a water/lipid interface is directly related to their fusogenic capacity. On this basis, we have searched for fragments of sequences corresponding to “viral fusion peptides” in other proteins. We have developed a strategy to detect them from primary sequences. Many candidates were detected, especially in transmembrane areas of membranous proteins, in signal sequences and in globular proteins. We suggest that they are involved in the dynamics of lipid-protein interactions.