Antibacterial Peptides: Potential Therapeutic Agent

Abstract

With the changing environment, microbial pathogens continuously develop antibiotic resistance (AR). As a response to this host-pathogen interaction, host organisms sometimes develop a strategy to stay ahead of the AR developed by pathogens. These molecules are small peptides known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). These peptides are short in length, specific in structure and thus have a unique mechanism of action. The uniqueness and specificity in the mechanism come due to the positively charged amino acids which are responsible for initial interaction among AMPs and the negatively charged membrane of the pathogenic cell. Microbes do not develop much ABR against AMPs because of the absence of epitopic regions on AMPs. This property makes AMPs the new therapeutic strategy against microbes. Here, we present a review of the AMPs, their sequence, structure, classification, mechanism of action and the computational strategy developed so far to identify new and improved AMPs that can be used as therapeutic agents.<br>