Title

Authors

Affiliation

¹Division of Biosafety Evaluation and Control, Korea National Institute of Health, Chungbuk 363-951, Republic of Korea; ²Division of Malaria and Parasitic Diseases, Centre for Immunology and Pathology, Korea National Institute of Health, Chungbuk 363-951, Republic of Korea

Email

todaewon@gmail.com; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received December 19, 2014; Accepted January 01, 2015; Published January 30, 2015

The increase in prevalence of antimicrobial resistance makes the search for new antibiotic agents imperative. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from natural resources have been recognized as suitable tools to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The liver fluke Clonorchis sinensis living in germ-filled environments could be a good source of antimicrobials. Here, we report the use of a rational protocol that combines AMP predictions based on their physicochemical properties and their in vivo stability to discover AMP candidates from the entire genome of C. sinensis. To screen AMP candidates, in silico analyses based on the physicochemical properties of known AMPs, such as length, charge, isoelectric point, and in vitro and in vivo aggregation values were performed. To enhance their in vivo stability, proteins having proteolytic cleavage sites were excluded. As a consequence, four high-activity, high-stability peptides were identified. These peptides could be potential starting materials for the development of new AMPs via structural modification and optimization. Thus, this study proposes a refined computational method to develop new AMPs and identifies four AMP candidates, which could serve as templates for further development of peptide antibiotics.

Keywords

Antibiotics, Infection, Antibacterial agent, Bioinformatics, Rational drug design

Citation

Yoo et al. Bioinformation 11(1): 017-020 (2015
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.