nanomaterials Article The Antifungal Mechanism of Amphotericin B Elucidated in Ergosterol and Cholesterol-Containing Membranes Using Neutron Reflectometry Robin Delhom 1,2,3 , Andrew Nelson 4 , Valerie Laux 1, Michael Haertlein 1, Wolfgang Knecht 3,5, Giovanna Fragneto 1 and Hanna P. Wacklin-Knecht 2,6,* 1 Institut Laue-Langevin, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, CS 20156, 38042 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France;
[email protected] (R.D.);
[email protected] (V.L.);
[email protected] (M.H.);
[email protected] (G.F.) 2 European Spallation Source ERIC, P.O. Box 176, 22100 Lund, Sweden 3 Department of Biology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 35, 22362 Lund, Sweden;
[email protected] 4 Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, Locked Bag 2001, Kirrawee DC, NSW 2232, Australia;
[email protected] 5 Lund Protein Production Platform, Lund University, Sölvegatan 35, 22362 Lund, Sweden 6 Department of Chemistry, Division of Physical Chemistry, Lund University, P.O. Box 124, 22100 Lund, Sweden * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 10 November 2020; Accepted: 4 December 2020; Published: 6 December 2020 Abstract: We have characterized and compared the structures of ergosterol- and cholesterol-containing 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) membranes before and after interaction with the amphiphilic antifungal drug amphotericin B (AmB) using neutron reflection. AmB inserts into both pure POPC and sterol-containing membranes in the lipid chain region and does not significantly perturb the structure of pure POPC membranes. By selective per-deuteration of the lipids/sterols, we show that AmB extracts ergosterol but not cholesterol from the bilayers and inserts to a much higher degree in the cholesterol-containing membranes.