The <i>Hirudo Medicinalis</i> Microbiome Is a Source of New Antimicrobial Peptides

oleh: Ekaterina Grafskaia, Elizaveta Pavlova, Vladislav V. Babenko, Ivan Latsis, Maja Malakhova, Victoria Lavrenova, Pavel Bashkirov, Dmitrii Belousov, Dmitry Klinov, Vassili Lazarev

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2020-09-01

Deskripsi

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are considered a promising new class of anti-infectious agents. This study reports new antimicrobial peptides derived from the <i>Hirudo medicinalis</i> microbiome identified by a computational analysis method applied to the <i>H. medicinalis</i> metagenome. The identified AMPs possess a strong antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria (MIC range: 5.3 to 22.4 μM), including <i>Staphylococcus haemolyticus</i>, an opportunistic coagulase–negative pathogen. The secondary structure analysis of peptides via CD spectroscopy showed that all the AMPs except pept_352 have mostly disordered structures that do not change under different conditions. For peptide pept_352, the α–helical content increases in the membrane environment. The examination of the mechanism of action of peptides suggests that peptide pept_352 exhibits a direct membranolytic activity. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity assay demonstrated that the nontoxic peptide pept_1545 is a promising candidate for drug development. Overall, the analysis method implemented in the study may serve as an effective tool for the identification of new AMPs.