Antimicrobial peptides: natural templates for synthetic membrane-active compounds

Abstract

The innate immunity of multicellular organisms relies in large part on the action of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) to resist microbial invasion. Crafted by evolution into an extremely diversified array of sequences and folds, AMPs do share a common amphiphilic 3-D arrangement. This feature is directly linked with a common mechanism of action that predominantly (although not exclusively) develops upon interaction of peptides with cell membranes of target cells. This minireview reports on current understanding of the modes of interaction of AMPs with biological and model membranes, especially focusing on recent insights into the folding and oligomerization requirements of peptides to bind and insert into lipid membranes and exert their antibiotic effects. Given the potential of AMPs to be developed into a new class of anti-infective agents, emphasis is placed on how the information on peptide-membrane interactions could direct the design and selection of improved biomimetic synthetic peptides with antibiotic properties.

Lipopeptides as anti-infectives: a practical perspective

“…Owing to the differences noted above, we do prefer to keep lipopeptides distinguished from AMPs, and direct the interested reader to the abundant literature available on the latter group [10][11][12][13][14]. The use of lipopeptides in the development of self-adjuvanting vaccines [15], or as tools for plant disease biocontrol [16], falls out of the scopes of this paper and will not be covered here.…”

Anuran Amphibians: A Huge and Threatened Factory of a Variety of Active Peptides with Potential Nanobiotechnological Applications in the Face of Amphibian Decline

“…However, the biological activity of several peptides from anuran skin remains unknown. The antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) compose the innate immunity system of anurans against microbial invasion (Giuliani et al, 2008;Radek & Gallo, 2007;Zasloff, 2002) effective against multidrug resistant strains of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and virus including cancer, and provide instructive lessons for the development of new and more efficient nanotechnological-based therapies for infectious and degenerative diseases treatment (Calderon et al, 2011;Rinaldi, 2002). Many AMPs possess a wide range of activity showing effectiveness against diverse microorganism strains.…”

“…Gram-negative Salmonella typhimurium, wall-less Mycoplasma gallisepticum and M. mycoides show resistance to dermaseptin B9 from P. bicolor (Fleury et al, 1998). Antimicrobial peptides are part of the innate immunity system of anurans against microbial invasion (Giuliani et al, 2008;Zasloff, 2002;Radek & Gallo, 2007). Crafted by evolution into an extremely diversified array of sequences and folds, AMPs share a common amphiphilic 3-D arrangement (Giuliani et al, 2008).…”

“…Antimicrobial peptides are part of the innate immunity system of anurans against microbial invasion (Giuliani et al, 2008;Zasloff, 2002;Radek & Gallo, 2007). Crafted by evolution into an extremely diversified array of sequences and folds, AMPs share a common amphiphilic 3-D arrangement (Giuliani et al, 2008). This feature is directly linked to a common mechanism of action that predominantly develops upon interaction of peptides with cell membranes of target cells (Giuliani et al, 2008).…”

“…Crafted by evolution into an extremely diversified array of sequences and folds, AMPs share a common amphiphilic 3-D arrangement (Giuliani et al, 2008). This feature is directly linked to a common mechanism of action that predominantly develops upon interaction of peptides with cell membranes of target cells (Giuliani et al, 2008). The mechanisms of action of AMPs in microbial membranes are complex and still relatively unknown, but they constitute a promising and attractive proposition as new antimicrobial therapeutics (Calderon et al, 2009(Calderon et al, , 2010(Calderon et al, , 2011.…”