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Pentacyclic triterpene acids (PTAs): betulinic (BAc), oleanolic (Ola) and ursolic (Urs) are potent pharmaceuticals applied in the therapy of cancer and bacterial infections. The mechanism of PTA action is multifactor, but the important step is their interaction with the lipids of mitochondrial and bacterial membranes. In our studies we applied the Langmuir monolayer technique to investigate the interactions between PTAs and cardiolipins (CLs) and phosphatidylglycerols (PGs). We applied two different mammalian mitochondrial CLs and one species extracted from the membrane of Escherichia coli. For comparison we performed the same experiments on the systems containing PTAs and 3 PGs strictly correlated structurally to the applied CLs. Our studies proved that PTAs can disturb the organization of CL-rich domains and affect the bacterial membrane fluidity by the interactions with phosphatidylglycerols, so anionic phospholipids are the targets of their membrane action. The thermodynamic interpretation of the results indicated that Urs has the highest membrane disorganizing potential among the 3 studied PTAs. The studies performed on model systems proved also that BAc can discriminate over structurally similar animal cardiolipin species, interacts specifically with BHCL - the main mammalian CL and can disturb its organization in the membrane. In contrast, Ola and Urs are much active as far as the interaction with bacterial CLs and PGs is concerned.

The interactions of mercury ions with the membrane phospholipids are considered to be of great importance regarding the toxicity of this metal in living organisms. To obtain deeper insight into this problem, we performed systematic studies applying the Langmuir technique complemented with synchrotron X-ray scattering methods (grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and X-ray reflectivity (XR)). We focused our attention on the interactions of inorganic mercury salts dissolved in the aqueous subphase with lipid monolayers, formed by selected membrane phospholipids, namely, dipalmitoylphosphatidylglicerol (DPPG), dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC), 1-octadecyl 2-sn-phosphatidylcholine (lyso-PC), and sphingomyelin (SM). Two different inorganic mercury salts, one of a hydracid, HgCl(2), and the other of an oxacid, Hg(NO(3))(2), have been investigated. Our results proved that the elastic properties of phospholipid monolayers are a key factor regarding the interactions with mercury ions. Significant differences in mercury ions complexation are observed with double-chain phospholipids (such as DPPG and DPPC) forming fluid layers of low compressibility and phospholipids forming more compressible films (like SM and lyso-PC). Namely, important changes in the monolayer characteristic were observed only for the latter kind of lipids. This is an important finding taking into account the accumulation of mercury in the central nervous system and its neurotoxic effects. SM is one of the most abundant lipids in neurons shells and therefore can be considered as a target lipid complexing mercury ions.