Back

Lipoproteins modulate the uptake and biological functionof cationic cell-penetrating peptides across the animal lineage.

Taylor, S. R.; Oluwasesin, T. V.; Salaikumaran, M. R.; Novak, B.; Briner, A.; Ailani, R.; Andrade, P. I.; Onuchic, P. L.; Carmo, O. M. S.; Kim, G.; Blum, J. A.; Galliver, M.; Stuart, C.; Mendez, N.; Patel, V.; Liang, G.-T.; O'Connell, R.; Islam, M. M.; Kashaniasl, Z.; Villar, M. J.; Cao, Y.; Zeng, X.-L.; Porta, L.; Yang, H.; Hohensee, G.; Kavalur, M.; Arey, R. N.; Blutt, S. N.; McRae, E. K. S.; Darabi, R.; Zhang, L.; Jones, K.; Pfisterer, S. G.; Johnston, C. W.; Pollet, J.; Hayashi, M. A. F.; Gitler, A. D.; Lee, H. K.; Holehouse, A. S.; Ludtke, S. J.; Boeynaems, S.

2026-08-24 cell biology
10.64898/2026.08.23.746575 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Cationic cell-penetrating peptides (+CPPs) are pervasive killer peptides produced by all animals and found in innate immune systems, venoms and neurodegenerative diseases. Despite their ubiquity, the mechanisms underlying their uptake remain opaque and intensely debated. Here, we interrogate +CPPs spanning 600 million years of animal evolution and identify endocytosis as a conserved/convergent uptake mechanism across cell types and organisms, at physiological concentrations. By combining multiplex imaging, genetic screening, cryo-electron tomography, and biophysical methods, we uncover that +CPPs seemingly universally enter eukaryote cells via 'hitchhiking' on lipoproteins. We further show that the interaction of +CPPs with lipoproteins modulates their antimicrobial function. Combined, our findings establish a unified molecular framework describing a pan-eukaryote cell penetrance mechanism. As hyperlipidemia is a common comorbidity, our findings have direct implications for human health. Lastly, the insights gleaned from this work highlight design principles that may inform the future engineering of peptide-based therapeutics and delivery vehicles.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.