Permeabilization of rat liver mitochondria by cecropin A-melittin hybrid peptides

Temporins, Small Antimicrobial Peptides with Leishmanicidal Activity

“…Most interestingly, in contrast with temporins and other AMPs (29,53), indolicidin exhibits a consistently reduced activity against parasites defective for LPG biosynthesis, such as the R2D2 mutant (27). However, as reported by Bera et al (27), because indolicidin produces an autophagic cell death, we cannot exclude the possibility of a receptor-mediated pathway for the induction of autophagy via LPG.…”

Role of Positional Hydrophobicity in the Leishmanicidal Activity of Magainin 2

“…Although one might conclude that this is due to the characteristics of the glycocalyx of the Leishmania promastigote, in which LPG covers at least 40% of the surface and precludes lysis by complement and attack by sandfly or macrophage hydrolases (15), the fact that the same ranking is observed for strain R2D2, which has a truncated LPG, makes the hypothesis questionable. Although LPG might seem to provide partial protection against MG-H1 and MG-H2 analogues, in contrast to F5W-magainin 2, the relevance of this finding is statistically questionable; and the level of protection attained with LPG against these two peptides never attained the levels found against more cationic peptides such as indolicidin (2) and cecropin A-melittin hybrids (8).…”

“…Figure 4 shows the kinetics of the process, which follows a pattern similar to that of inhibition of promastigote proliferation and SYTOX green influx. Full depolarization was defined as that obtained with 2.5 M CA(1-8)M(1-18), a membrane-active antibiotic peptide (8). Finally, to gain insight into the morphological damage inflicted on the promastigote by the peptides, electron microscopy was carried out with parasites treated with the peptides at their respective ED 90 s (Fig.…”