Digesting antimicrobial peptides

Synthetic biology researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a data-mining approach to identify a new antimicrobial peptide derived from a human digestive protein, adding a potential weapon in the battle against antibiotic resistance.

As bacteria become increasingly resistant to known antibiotics, new therapeutic candidates are sorely needed. Antimicrobial peptides, small proteins produced by eukaryotes and bacteria to combat pathogens and competing strains, have potential for broad-spectrum activity with few avenues for resistance. The peptides have a positively charged region, which enables them to kill bacteria by disrupting their negatively charged membranes, and a hydrophobic region that allows them to permeate membranes to target intracellular machinery...