Antimicrobial Peptide from the Epidermal Mucus of Some Estuarine Cat Fishes

Antimicrobial proteins and peptides play key roles in innate immunity and they had been observed from a wide variety of organisms in the last few years. The present study was undertaken to characterize antimicrobial peptides from the epidermal mucus of cat fishes collected from the Parangipettai coastal environment. Antimicrobial properties of the cat fishes were tested against ten pathogenic bacteria and ten pathogenic fungi. The results of the present investigation reported that the mucus of the cat fishes having remarkable antimicrobial activity. In particularly, Mystus gulio had much activity than the Arius maculatus. The molecular masses of the peptides were 13.6 kDa and 13.9 kDa as determined by SDSpolyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. This peptide had shown very effective activity against various human pathogens. The present findings suggest that cat fish’s mucus having very good antimicrobial activity against pathogenic microbes.