Increased microbial drug resistance has generated a global requirement for new anti-infective agents. As part of an effort to develop new, low-molecular-mass peptide antibiotics, we used a rationale-based minimalist approach to design short, nonhemolytic, potent, and broad-spectrum antibiotic peptides with increased serum stability. These peptides were designed to attain an amphipathic structur...

Bacterial resistance to almost all available antibiotics is an important public health issue. A major goal in antimicrobial drug discovery is the generation of new chemicals capable of killing pathogens with high selectivity, particularly multi-drug-resistant ones. Here we report the design, preparation and activity of new compounds based on a tunable, chemically accessible and upscalable lipop...

To combat the threat to human health and biosecurity from antimicrobial resistance, an understanding of its mechanisms and drivers is needed. Emergence of antimicrobial resistance in microorganisms is a natural phenomenon, yet antimicrobial resistance selection has been driven by antimicrobial exposure in health care, agriculture, and the environment. Onward transmission is affected by standard...

This study investigated the resistance of various Salmonella strains to beta-lactam antibiotics. Salmonella Minnesota (36 strains) and Salmonella Heidelberg (24 strains) were isolated from broiler chickens and carcasses by the Disk Diffusion Test and resistance genes blaCTX-M-8, blaACC-1 and blaCMY-2 were detected by PCR. Of the 60 strains tested, 80% were resistant to at least one antibiotic. ...

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has become a major challenge in current clinical treatment. As essential natural molecules involved innate immunity, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have the potential to break limits antibiotic resistance. While AMPs are widely presented various organisms on this planet, marine environment is unique generating large number that exhibit characteristi...

Background It is well known that many bioactive peptides (intragenic) are encrypted in source proteins and that they can exert their function once released by proteolytic cleavage; e.g. hypotensive, opioids and antimicrobial peptides. However, other bioactive peptides may be “stuck” on a polipeptide chain with no cleavage sites for its release. These “non-obvious” intragenic peptides are also o...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a key component of the host's innate immune system, targeting invasive and colonizing bacteria. For successful survival and colonization of the host, bacteria have a series of mechanisms to interfere with AMP activity, and AMP resistance is intimately connected with the virulence potential of bacterial pathogens. In particular, because AMPs are considered as po...

Infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi are among the leading causes of death worldwide. The emergence of drug-resistance mechanisms, especially among bacteria, threatens the efficacy of all current antimicrobial agents, some of them already ineffective. As a result, there is an urgent need for new antimicrobial drugs. Host defense antimicrobial peptides (HDPs) are natural occu...

This article highlights new members, novel mechanisms of action, new functions, and interesting applications of antimicrobial peptides reported in 2014. As of December 2014, over 100 new peptides were registered into the Antimicrobial Peptide Database, increasing the total number of entries to 2493. Unique antimicrobial peptides have been identified from marine bacteria, fungi, and plants. Envi...

Objective(s): To present a brief overview of various natural sources of antimicrobials with the aim of highlighting invertebrates living in polluted environments as additional sources of antimicrobials. Materials and Methods: A PubMed search using antibacterials, antimicrobials, invertebrates, and natural products as keywords was carried out. In addition, we consulted conference proceedings, or...