Mosses (Bryophyta) form the second largest taxonomic group in the plant kingdom and play an important ecological role. At the same time, mosses are a potential source of biologically active compounds for pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications. Despite this potential, they remain an overlooked group of organisms. To date, little is known about their membrane active proteins. Therefore, in this study we investigated aqueous extracts of mosses to determine whether these extracts contain potential membrane-active proteins that would be lytic for a mammalian (bovine erythrocytes) and/or an insect (Sf9 insect cell line) cell model. We also aimed to determine whether these proteins at the same time bind to membrane lipids, which could imply that the lytic activity of aqueous extracts of mosses could be attributed to the action of membrane-active proteins on lipid receptors. In this study, we evaluated raw aqueous extracts (with or without the heat-treatment) of selected moss species naturally thriving in Slovenia and found that some of these mosses contain proteins that recognize and bind to the membrane lipid receptors. The latter was detected in 10 % (e.g. in four species) of the mosses analysed. Some of the lipid receptor-binding proteins were cytolytic. This was the case for the aqueous extracts of Lunuaria cruciata and Marchantia quadrata, to which we first attributed a cytolytic potential, which could be due to the content of membrane-active proteins.
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