Antimicrobial mechanism

How a peptide breaks a bacterium open

LL-37 kills mostly by disrupting membranes, not by hitting a single enzyme. Its cationic face binds a microbe negatively charged surface, its hydrophobic face slides into the lipid, and enough copies thin and rupture the bilayer. Because the target is the membrane itself, resistance is harder for microbes to evolve, though not impossible.

This unit walks the killing mechanism step by step, compares the competing physical models, maps potency across pathogens and conditions, and confronts the salt and resistance problems that separate a lab result from a working antibiotic.