Residue-Specialized Membrane Poration Kinetics of Melittin and Its Variants: Insight from Mechanistic Landscapes *

Zhi-Xiong Deng,Jing-Liang Li,Bing Yuan,Kai Yang

Fig. 7 (Color online) Aggregation of peptides on/in the membrane during the peptide-membrane interactions. (a) Evolution of peptide aggregation during the interaction process demonstrated by the cluster number (top) and the peptide number in the largest cluster (bottom). $P/L$=1/43. (b), (c) Free energy landscape of the aggregation of two peptides (b) and the projection along different CVs (c). Inset in (c) represents definition of the two CVs, $\Delta D$ and $\theta$, which are used to describe the aggregation condition of the two peptides.