Antimicrobial Peptides From Lycosidae (Sundevall, 1833) Spiders

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been found in all organism taxa and may play an essential role as a host defense system. AMPs are organized in various conformations, such as linear peptides, disulfide bond-linked peptides, backbone-linked peptides and circular peptides. AMPs apparently act primarily on the plasma membrane, although an increasing number of works have shown that they may also target various intracellular sites. Spider venoms are rich sources of biomolecules that show several activities, including modulation or blockage of ion channels, anti-insect, anti-cancer, antihypertensive and antimicrobial activities, among others. In spider venoms from the Lycosidae family there are many linear AMPs with a wide range of activities against several microorganisms. Due to these singular activities, some Lycosidae AMPs have been modified to improve or decrease desirable or undesirable effects, respectively. Such modifications, especially with the aim of increasing their antibiotic activity, have led to the filing of many patent applications. This review explores the abundance of Lycosidae venom AMPs and some of their derivatives, and their use as new drug models.

Proteotranscriptomic Insights into the Venom Composition of the Wolf Spider Lycosa tarantula

“…Interestingly, a rather long linear peptide was present at the C-terminal of all sequences. These peptides showed the typical features of the cytolytic, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) described in Lycosidae [ 25 ], namely an amphipathic distribution of hydrophobic and charged residues, and may be cleaved off during the maturation process.…”

“…The molecular entities responsible for this cytolytic activity are known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which are usually small, highly positively charged linear peptides adopting an amphipathic secondary structure in lipid membrane. Several such AMPs have been isolated and sequenced from Lycosidae venom [25]. Often, only the mature peptide sequences are available, not the full precursors, raising the question about the molecular origin of these AMPs.…”

“…Interestingly, a rather long linear peptide was present at the C-terminal of all sequences. These peptides showed the typical features of the cytolytic, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) described in Lycosidae [25], namely an amphipathic distribution of hydrophobic and charged residues, and may be cleaved off during the maturation process. Color coding: yellow=cysteine, red=negatively charged residues, blue= positively charged residues, green=glutamine/asparagine, light green=serine, cyan=threonine, orange=methionine.…”

Linear Peptides—A Combinatorial Innovation in the Venom of Some Modern Spiders

“…A fourth group of major compounds are linear peptides (LPs) with membranolytic and further still unknown activities, also called antimicrobial peptides, but their occurrence among spiders is widely unknown. Up to now, the identification of LPs in spider venoms was limited to only eight spider species, all belonging to the mentioned RTA-clade, namely lycosids ( Yan and Adams, 1998 ; Budnik et al, 2004 ; Melo-Braga et al, 2020 ), oxyopids ( Corzo et al, 2002 ; Dubovskii et al, 2011 ), zodariids ( Kozlov et al, 2006 ; Vassilevski et al, 2008 ; Dubovskii et al, 2015 ), ctenids ( Pimenta et al, 2005 ), and the trechaleids Cupiennius salei and C. getazi ( Kuhn-Nentwig et al, 2002 ; Kuhn-Nentwig, 2021 ).…”

Synthetic Peptides Derived From Lycosa Erythrognatha Venom: Interaction With Phospholipid Membranes and Activity Against Resistant Bacteria

“…Aiming at investigating new promising AMPs that could act on superbugs, our group has isolated, characterized and synthesized several AMPs from L. erythrognatha spider venom. Among them, LyeTxI demonstrated an outstanding antimicrobial potential both in vitro and in vivo ( Santos et al, 2010 ; Consuegra et al, 2013 ; Cruz Olivo et al, 2017 ; Melo-Braga et al, 2020 ). Based on LyeTxI, we developed a derivative form, named LyeTxI-b ( Reis et al, 2018 ), which demonstrated even greater antimicrobial potential against some bacterial species, also showing an anti-cancer activity against glioblastoma cells ( Abdel-Salam et al, 2019 ).…”