Prospect on Antibacterial Peptides Secreted from Amphibian Skins

Due to drug resistance of pathogenic bacteria having been become serious in the recent years,it is rather impending to search for new antimicrobial drugs from various natural sources.Naturally,amphibian antibacterial peptides(ABPs) have been given much attentions and become an important object for our screening antimicrobial drugs from them because of ABP's special features with small molecular weight,water-solubility and low antigenicity.This paper provides an overview on the biological activities,molecular structures,family classification,antimicrobial mechanism,application values and research prospects of ABPs.It was found that ABPs also have some anti-viral,anti-tumor and hemolytic activities in addition to anti-bacterial activity.According to their different structures there are three types of ABPs: linear α-helix peptide,loop peptide and peptide contains 10 to 13 amino acid residues,and it was found that there are many ABP families,such as Magainin family,Aurein family,Bombinin family,Bombinin-like family and Brevinin family etc.and they have the different activities because of belonging to different family.ABPs kill microorganism mainly by two mechanisms: lysis of plasma membrane or non-lysis of plasma membrane.Besides,ABPs have broad applications in clinical medicine,food preservation,and agricultural production.With in-depth study of the molecular structure of ABPs,the limitations,e.g.low expression,poor specificity,low yield and high cost during their production,will be eliminated and in the future,amphibian antimicrobial peptides will become more useful resources to produce new antimicrobial drugs for humans.