Antimicrobial peptide class that forms discrete β-barrel stable pores anchored by transmembrane helices
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Bacteriocin peptides are weapons of inter-bacterial warfare and belong to the larger group of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which are frequently proposed as alternatives to antibiotics. Many AMPs kill by destroying the target's cytoplasmic membrane using short-lived membrane perturbations. Contrastingly, protein toxins form large pores by stably assembling in the target membrane. Here we describe an AMP class termed TMcins (for transmembrane helix-containing bacteriocin), in which half of the AMP forms a transmembrane helix. This characteristic allows TMcin to assemble into stable and large oligomeric pores. The biosynthetic locus of TMcin, which was broadly active against Gram-positive bacteria, is distributed throughout two major bacterial phyla, yet bears no homology to previously reported bacteriocin biosynthetic gene clusters. Our discovery of an AMP class that achieves pore stability otherwise only found in protein toxins transforms our current understanding of AMP structure and function and underscores the continuing importance of phenotype-initiated investigations in uncovering wholly uncharacterized antimicrobials.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".