Antimicrobial Peptides and Recent Advance in Structural Modifications

Abstract

Antibiotics resistance has increasingly been a concern as more antibiotics are prescribed for infectious diseases. Alternatives to classical antibiotics are in needed and peptide antibiotics are promising as one of the choices. Generally, modifying peptides like changing amino acid sequence or alternating the order within the sequence could increase antimicrobial activity. However, other peptide modifications are interesting as well. Those are cyclization, linking with sugar, lipids, or nucleic acids. Some of these modifications could yield more than 100 folds of activity and reduce cytotoxicity comparing with the parent peptides. In order to design or choose parent peptide for modification, peptide structure and activity have to be in concern. Suitable structure depends on some factors like amphipathicity and toxicity of peptides.