The Hirudo Medicinalis Microbiome Is a Source of New Antimicrobial Peptides

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

The Hirudo Medicinalis Microbiome Is a Source of New Antimicrobial Peptides

2020

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are considered a promising new class of anti-infectious agents. This study reports new antimicrobial peptides derived from the Hirudo medicinalis microbiome identified by a computational analysis method applied to the H. medicinalis 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 Staphylococcus haemolyticus, 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.

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