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Many biological processes are governed by chemical equilibria and the conventional thermodynamic formalisms apply. In particular the association of ligands to macromolecules, such as enzymes to large supramolecular structures, to large assemblies of proteins and/or nucleic acids (e.g. the ribosome) or to membranes has important consequences for the regulation of many biological activities and a quantitative understanding of these processes is of utmost importance for basic biological sciences and even more so for applied biomedical research. As the macromolecules involved can participate in many such regulatory interactions and these interactions are interconnected it is often necessary to describe such interaction networks by systems biology approaches. Here we illustrate the underlying thermodynamic principles by taking as an example a family of peptides that exhibit antimicrobial and cell penetrating activities which are potentially at the center for the transport of nucleic acids into cells, a property that is useful for some of state-of-the art medical treatments using highly-specific small interfering RNA or DNA molecules. The thermodynamic concepts will be illustrated by focusing on the interactions of these peptides, namely their partitioning into lipid membranes and the association of such peptides with nucleic acids, and we conclude with more detailed presentations of some of the methods that have been used for their investigation.

Equilibria Governing the Membrane Insertion of Polypeptides and Their Interactions with Other Biomacromolecules