Search results for "Antimicrobial Peptides"
showing 10 items of 76 documents
Antilisterial peptides from Spanish dry-cured hams: Purification and identification.
2016
The typical Spanish dry-cured ham has a particular sensory quality that makes it a distinctive food, highly appreciated for consumers worldwide. Its particular physicochemical properties, such as high salt content and reduced water activity contribute to their shelf-stability. However, post-processing actions carried out for the commercialization of these products such as slicing may increase the risk of development of pathogenic microorganisms as Listeria monocytogenes. During ripening, muscle proteins are hydrolyzed by muscle peptidases releasing peptides and free amino acids. Some of these peptides have been described to exert biological activities such as antioxidant and ACE-inhibition.…
The conservation and diversity of ascidian cells and molecules involved in the inflammatory reaction: The Ciona robusta model
2021
Ascidians are marine invertebrate chordates belonging to the earliest branch (Tunicata) in the chordate phylum, therefore, they are of interest for studying the evolution of immune systems. Due to the known genome, the non-colonial Ciona robusta, previously considered to be C. intestinalis type A, is a model species for the study of inflammatory response. The internal defense of ascidians mainly relies on hemocytes circulating in the hemolymph and pharynx. Hemocytes can be in vivo challenged by LPS injection and various granulocyte and vacuolated cell populations differentiated to produce and release inflammatory factors. Molecular biology and gene expression studies revealed complex defens…
Activation of Intestinal Epithelial Stat3 Orchestrates Tissue Defense during Gastrointestinal Infection
2015
Gastrointestinal infections with EHEC and EPEC are responsible for outbreaks of diarrheal diseases and represent a global health problem. Innate first-line-defense mechanisms such as production of mucus and antimicrobial peptides by intestinal epithelial cells are of utmost importance for host control of gastrointestinal infections. For the first time, we directly demonstrate a critical role for Stat3 activation in intestinal epithelial cells upon infection of mice with Citrobacter rodentium - a murine pathogen that mimics human infections with attaching and effacing Escherichia coli. C. rodentium induced transcription of IL-6 and IL-22 in gut samples of mice and was associated with activat…
Dual Antimicrobial and Antiproliferative Activity of TcPaSK Peptide Derived from a Tribolium castaneum Insect Defensin
2021
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) found in the innate immune system of a wide range of organisms might prove useful to fight infections, due to the reported slower development of resistance to AMPs. Increasing the cationicity and keeping moderate hydrophobicity of the AMPs have been described to improve antimicrobial activity. We previously found a peptide derived from the Tribolium castaneum insect defensin 3, exhibiting antrimicrobial activity against several human pathogens. Here, we analyzed the effect against Staphyloccocus aureus of an extended peptide (TcPaSK) containing two additional amino acids, lysine and asparagine, flanking the former peptide fragment in the original insect defensi…
Tribolium castaneum immune defense genes are differentially expressed in response to Bacillus thuringiensis toxins sharing common receptor molecules …
2015
In Tribolium castaneum larvae we have demonstrated by RNA interference knockdown that the Bacillus thuringiensis Cry3Ba toxin receptors Cadherin-like and Sodium solute symporter proteins are also functional receptors of the less active Cry3Aa toxin. Differences in susceptibility to B. thuringiensis infection might not only rely on toxin-receptor interaction but also on host defense mechanisms. We compared the expression of the immune related genes encoding Apolipophorin-III and two antimicrobial peptides, Defensin3 and Defensin2 after B. thuringiensis challenge. All three genes were up-regulated following Cry3Ba spore-crystal intoxication whereas only Defensins gene expression was induced u…
ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTISTAPHYLOCOCCAL BIOFILM ACTIVITY FROM THE SEA URCHIN PARACENTROTUS LIVIDUS
2009
Aims: Staphylococcal biofilm-associated infections are resistant to conventional antibiotics. Consequently, new agents are needed to treat them. With this aim, we focused on the effector cells (coelomocytes) of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus immune system. Methods and Results: We tested the activity of the 5-kDa peptide fraction of the cytosol from coelomocytes (5-CC) against a group of Gram-positive, Gram-negative bacteria and fungi. We determined minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging from 253.7 to 15.8 mg ml(-1). We observed an inhibitory activity and antibiofilm properties of 5-CC against staphylococcal biofilms of reference strains Staphylococcus epidermidis DSM 3269 an…
Antimicrobial Defense and Persistent Infection in Insects
2008
During 400 million years of existence, insects have rarely succumbed to the evolution of microbial resistance against their potent antimicrobial immune defenses. We found that microbial clearance after infection is extremely fast and that induced antimicrobial activity starts to increase only when most of the bacteria (99.5%) have been removed. Our experiments showed that those bacteria that survived exposure to the insect's constitutive immune response were subsequently more resistant to it. These results imply that induced antimicrobial compounds function primarily to protect the insect against the bacteria that persist within their body, rather than to clear microbial infections. These f…
Overlap and diversity in antimicrobial peptide databases: Compiling a non-redundant set of sequences
2015
Abstract Motivation: The large variety of antimicrobial peptide (AMP) databases developed to date are characterized by a substantial overlap of data and similarity of sequences. Our goals are to analyze the levels of redundancy for all available AMP databases and use this information to build a new non-redundant sequence database. For this purpose, a new software tool is introduced. Results: A comparative study of 25 AMP databases reveals the overlap and diversity among them and the internal diversity within each database. The overlap analysis shows that only one database (Peptaibol) contains exclusive data, not present in any other, whereas all sequences in the LAMP_Patent database are inc…
Fragments of β-thymosin from the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus as potential antimicrobial peptides against staphylococcal biofilms.
2012
The immune mediators in echinoderms can be a potential source of novel antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) applied toward controlling pathogenic staphylococcal biofilms that are intrinsically resistant to conventional antibiotics. The peptide fraction5 kDa from the cytosol of coelomocytes of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (5-CC) was tested against a group of Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogen reference strains. The 5-CC of P. lividus was active against all planktonic-tested strains but also showed antibiofilm properties against staphylococcal strains. Additionally, we demonstrated the presence of three small peptides in the 5-CC belonging to segment 9-41 of a P. lividusβ-thymosin. The…
Differential involvement of mussel hemocyte sub-populations in the clearance of bacteria.
2008
Abstract Mussels are filter-feeders living in a bacteria-rich environment. We have previously found that numerous bacterial species are naturally present within the cell-free hemolymph, including several of the Vibrio genus, whereas the intra-cellular content of hemocytes was sterile. When bacteria were injected into the circulation of the mussel, the number of living intra-hemocyte bacteria dramatically increased in less than an hour, suggesting intense phagocytosis, then gradually decreased, with no viable bacteria remaining 12 h post-injection for Micrococcus lysodeikticus, 24 h for Vibrio splendidus and more than 48 h for V ibrio anguillarum. The total hemocyte count (THC) was dramatica…